The German government has awarded contracts to 480MW worth of solar-plus-storage capacity in its latest oversubscribed public “innovation” tender for renewable energy.
The latest tender—the second this year—was advertised for 475MW of solar-plus-storage capacity. A total of 53 bids for a combined 678MW were submitted, with 480MW across 32 projects ultimately contracted.
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Successful bids were awarded at prices varying from 4.5 euro cents/kWh (5.1 US cents /kWh) to 5.4 cents/kWh, with an average of 5.14 cents/kWh. The price for this auction was slightly lower than the previous round that closed in June at 5.34 cents/kWh. Klaus Müller, president of the German federal network agency, the Bundesnetzagentur, said this drop was because the auction was “once again highly competitive”.
However, while this auction was oversubscribed and prices moved down, interest in Germany’s innovation auctions for flexible renewables has waned in 2026. Prior to this year, the previous three innovation auctions were more than three times oversubscribed, with the latter two drawing applications for more than four times the available capacity.
Bavaria was awarded the most capacity in the recent auction, with 12 projects worth 177MW, followed by Brandenburg (four projects for 94MW) and North Rhine-Westphalia (four projects for 48MW).
Despite a decline in demand for innovation auction contracts, Germany has still been a leading light for Europe’s public energy auctions. Its last two standalone utility-scale solar PV auctions have been significantly oversubscribed, each awarding over 2GW of new capacity.
Earlier this year, PV Tech Premium spoke with the chief investment officer of Polish developer R.Power about how revenue certainty and incorporating storage have maintained appetites for the German government’s tenders.
