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Solar system in Eggebek, Schleswig-Holstein
Photo: Daniel Reinhardt / IMAGO
The solar industry continues to have great interest in operating photovoltaic systems in Germany. In the Federal Network Agency's most recent open space tender for funding under the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), the advertised amount was almost three and a half times oversubscribed. “There has never been such a large participation in a tender for open-space systems,” said authority President Klaus Müller on Wednesday (click here for the announcement from the Federal Network Agency). The amount tendered as of December 1st was 1.61 gigawatts. However, bids with an output of 5.48 gigawatts were submitted.
The large crowds and the resulting competition led to low award values: The awards went to operators who wanted amounts between 4.44 cents and 5.47 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity as a so-called feed-in tariff. The average award value for this tender was 5.17 cents per kilowatt hour. That was 1.3 cents less than in the previous round of tenders. A total of 124 bids were accepted.
Moor rewetting project
Most of the awards went to locations in Bavaria (604 megawatts), followed by locations in Brandenburg (197 MW) and Saxony-Anhalt (167 MW). Most projects are to be built on highway or railway shoulders (828 MW).
Photovoltaic systems with a capacity of 530 MW are to be built on arable or grassland areas. There were also surcharges for solar systems on areas that will continue to be used for agriculture, so-called Agri-PV. Two awards went to projects in which moorland that had been drained during the construction of the solar systems was to be re-wetted.
The largest individual project taken into consideration had a bid volume of 74 megawatts. There were also 19 other large projects over 20 megawatts.
beb/dpa