Germany’s federal network agency (Bundesnetzagentur) has announced the results of its latest ground-mount solar auction, which closed with bids for more than twice as much capacity as was tendered.
The auction closed on 1 December with 634 bids for a total of 5,247MW of ground-mounted solar capacity. The Bundesnetzagentur had originally sought 2,328MW of capacity.
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Today, the agency announced that 262 projects with a combined capacity of 2,341MW were successful in the auction. The prices of successful bids ranged between 4.4 euro cents/kWh (5.2 US dollar cents/kWh) and 5.3 euro cents/kWh, with an average awarded price of 5.00 cents/kWh.
This auction was a massive expansion on the previous round that closed in August 2025 and which saw bids for around 600MW of excess capacity. The latest round returned to the massive levels of interest seen in auctions in late 2024 and early 2025, both of which were at least twice oversubscribed.
“Following two auctions with a decrease in the number of bids, more than twice as many bids were submitted this time than in the previous round. The high level of participation indicates the attractiveness of the framework conditions for the auctions,” said Klaus Müller, president of the Bundesnetzagentur.
Bavaria was awarded the most capacity “by far”, the network said, with 901MW across 112 successful bids, followed by Saxony-Anhalt (282MW) and Brandenburg (216MW).
Most of the successful projects are planned alongside motorways and railways lines, which includes125 projects with a total of 1,150MW capacity. Second were projects on farmland or grassland in so-called “disadvantaged” areas, which are areas unsuitable for agricultural activity. A total of 88 bids worth 874MW of capacity were successful in these sites.
Third was “special solar installations”, which are dual-use sites for both solar generation and agriculture (known as agrivoltaics) or another second purpose. Almost 9% of the successful projects were at these sites, with 30 bids covering 204MW of capacity.
