October wind, solar tenders in Germany bring no surprizes

Germany held tenders for 150 MW of solar and 675 MW of onshore wind projects at the start of October, which resulted in contracts for 153 MW of solar and just 204 MW of wind.

As in previous months, the onshore wind tender was largely undersubscribed. It got only 25 bids, all of which won. As a result of this tender, wind farms with a total capacity of 74 MW are to be built in Brandenburg, while North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein would get 51 MW and 29 MW, respectively, of new wind capacity.

The average price of the wind awards was EUR 0.062 (USD 0.069) per kWh, which was the ceiling price in the tender.

In contrast to wind, the solar tender was heavily oversubscribed, attracting 153 bids with a total capacity of 648 MW. Of the 153 MW winning projects, 130 MW will install solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on Bavarian farmland.

The high competition in the solar tender resulted in an average award price of EUR 0.049/kWh. The lowest successful bids were of EUR 0.0459/kWh.

There has been a significant drop in onshore wind capacity additions in Germany and one of the main reasons for that, according to WindEurope, is the slow and complex permitting process. Recently, the economy ministry presented a set of measures to support the expansion of wind, including efforts to bring greater clarity in the area of environmental protection, to improve grid expansion planning, and to set clearer zoning for wind.

A new draft of Germany’s climate action programme, however, reduced the country's onshore wind goal to 67 GW-71 GW for 2030, from 80 GW in an earlier draft. The solar target, meanwhile, has increased to 98 GW from 85 GW.

The Federal Network Agency, also known as the Bundesnetzagetur (BNetzA), noted that more solar and onshore wind tenders are coming on November 1 and December 1.

(EUR 1 = USD 1.11)

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!