KfW has received approval from the German Ministry of Economics for the subsidy payments. Now that the funds have been released, the bank will start to process the applications it has already received since the beginning of the year.
“The lights are back on green,” a KfW spokesperson told pv magazine on Friday. The bank noted that there has been a high interest in PV + storage applications, and that a small backlog of applications has already built up.
In October, KfW had to place the subsidy on hold, as the funds for the whole of 2016 had been exhausted. The program for that year also suffered start up difficulties, with payments not beginning until March, so funds earmarked for the whole year were exhausted in just 7 months.
Industry experts also expect the funding to fall short in 2017. “Commitments for this year already amount to €11.5 million,” stated a Ministry of Economics spokesperson. A total of €30 million has been set aside to fund the subsidy, which runs until 2018.
Last year, KfW approved 6500 loans for PV + storage systems at a total amount of €105 million. Close to 5700 applications were filed for battery storage in combination with a PV system, 800 of these were for storage to be retrofitted onto an existing installation.
From the start of this year, the subsidy has been reduced to 19%, dropping again to 16% halfway through the year.
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