Germany has awarded 512MW of capacity to solar-plus-storage projects in its most recent Innovation Auction.
The auction, run by the Bundesnetzagentur – the German Federal Network Agency – had a total available capacity of 583MW. 48 project bids were submitted, adding up to a total of 564MW, and ultimately 512MW was accepted, while five bids were rejected.
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The prices for successful bids ranged between €0.0678/kWh and €0.0917/kWh and the average volume-weighted price was €0.0833/kWh, which the Bundesnetzagentur said was “well below” the maximum tendered price.
The auction sought solar-plus-storage projects on arable grasslands, with different criteria offered for different states. Bavaria was awarded the most capacity by far, with 245MW across 24 projects. Next closest was Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with four projects for 79MW and Schleswig-Holstein with five projects for 73MW.
The October 2023 iteration of the innovation auction was oversubscribed and awarded 408MW of solar-plus-storage capacity.
At the same time, the government announced the results of its latest onshore wind auction, where over 2.3GW of capacity was awarded, which it said “set a new record”.
Auction activity for solar PV has been frequent in Germany of late. April saw the closure of a 2.2GW ground-mounted PV auction, the largest to date. This followed the 1.6GW proposition in December 2023, which was oversubscribed by over three times.
The auctions have formed part of the significant expansion of the German PV sector. The first four months of 2024 saw over 5GW of new capacity added, “record” installations according to the trade association Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft (BSW Solar). The same trade association forecast that Germany would be consistently installing 22GW of new solar capacity annually from 2026, a figure that would make the country’s target of installing 215GW of cumulative capacity by 2030 “realistically achievable”.
