Solar sweeps the board again in German renewables auction
Not one wind power project was submitted to the German network authority for the April round of a national clean energy procurement program. Almost 204 MW of solar generation capacity was allocated across 30 solar projects with an average final electricity price of €0.053/kWh.
From pv magazine Germany.
Wind developers appear to have thrown in the towel in Germany with federal network agency the Bundesnetzagentur revealing it received no wind project bids for last month’s national solar and wind power energy auction, which procured 203.7 MW of solar capacity across 30 projects.
The latest auction results continued a bumper run for solar, which has secured all of the generation capacity made available to date under the joint solar and wind power procurement rounds.
Another oversubscribed exercise attracted bids from 113 solar projects with a combined planned generation capacity of 553.2 MW.
Solar price
The final average solar electricity price settled in the exercise – €0.0533/kWh – was lower than the €0.0540 recorded in the opening round of the solar and wind auction program in November but more expensive than the €0.0518/kWh average price bid in March’s solar-only auction. The Bundesnetzagentur said successful bids in the latest tender round ranged from €0.0497 to €0.0561/kWh.
With a dozen bids excluded for paperwork errors, the successful projects were allocated across ten federal states. Bavaria secured a third of the facilities, with an aggregate capacity of 75.5 MW, Saarland and Saxony-Anhalt each secured four projects and two plants in Brandenburg will offer a total generation capacity of 35.3 MW.
The clock is not ticking on project completion deadlines yet as publication of the successful bidders on the Bundesnetzagentur website, which usually triggers that process, has not taken place yet. The agency is giving project developers more wiggle room because of the disruption caused by the Covid-19 crisis.