Germany’s latest solar PV auction for ground-mounted capacity has ended three and half times oversubscribed with nearly 5.5GW of bidding capacity submitted.
The German Federal Network Agency, the Bundesnetzagentur, today published (31 January) the results for the tender that sought 1.61GW of solar PV capacity.
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“The last round of tenders also sets a record: never before has there been such a large participation in a tender for open-space systems. With a submitted bid amount of 5.48 gigawatts, the tender quantity of 1.61 gigawatts was almost three and a half times oversubscribed. The competition is increasing low award values,” said Klaus Müller, President of the Federal Network Agency, about the record high number of bids submitted: 574.
Out of the record 574 bids submitted, 124 were awarded for a total capacity of 1.6GW, with the average price set at €0.0517/kWh (US$0.062/kWh), 1.3 cents below the previous round. The lowest bid accepted was €0.0444/kWh, while the highest accepted bid was €0.0547/kWh.
German auctions celebrated in Germany have met a similar fate of ending up oversubscribed, similar to this one. Both the building and noise barriers auction in November 2023 and the innovation auction – seeking solar-plus-storage capacity – in October 2023 ended up oversubscribed too.
The decision from the German Federal Network Agency in January 2023 to increase the tender prices for the auctions in 2023 has been successful as both the December and March ground-mounted PV auctions ended up oversubscribed.
Bavaria was the region with the most capacity awarded, with 604MW and 63 bids, followed by Brandenburg with 197MW and Saxony-Anhalt with 167MW.
The next round of solar auction is set for 1 March 2024 (the deadline) with 2.2GW of capacity tendered at a maximum value of €0.737/kWh. For more information on the next auction, you can read the details here.
These auctions are among the strategies the German government implemented to reach its target of 215GW installed solar capacity by 2030, which would require the country to install an average of 22GW. Even though the country has yet to reach that number, last year it added over 14GW of solar PV capacity, an 85% increase from the 7.5GW of capacity added in 2022.