A good 90% of the ground-mounted PV projects, which were awarded a contract in the third round of Germany’s tenders program for large-scale solar, has been implemented and has applied for funding on time, according to the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur).
“The renewed high implementation rate shows that tenders are working. The bidders have offered prices that are feasible,” said Jochen Homann, President of the Federal Network Agency. “Unfortunately, for some projects, the applications for eligibility were not made in time despite the information we released.”
In the third round of tendering in December 2015, the Federal Network Agency granted a total of 43 contracts for ground-mounted systems with a combined capacity of 204 MW. The additional value calculated using the uniform pricing method was 8.00 euro cents per kilowatt hour. The value of the last successful bid is paid for all projects.
Project developers have two years to realize the plants. In the case of the third round of bidding, the deadline was December 18, 2017.
After 18 months, a price reduction of 0.3 euro cents per kilowatt hour will be applied as a compensation – as well as when the investments are realized on areas other than that indicated in the original bid.
Bidders can also split their projects into several sites. According to the Federal Network Agency, the deadline has been missed in four cases, as their applications for eligibility were submitted too late.
In these cases, Germany’s renewable energy law (EEG) establishes that a penalty payment in favor of the EEG account is due for the unrealized capacity. The affected projects would now have to try to be selected again in future tenders.
In the first round of tenders, the Federal Network Agency said the realization rate was 96%. In the second, this percentage was 90%.
Meanwhile, the additional tariff has almost halved. In the last call for tenders held in October 2017, the average price fell to 4.91 cents per kilowatt-hour. The lowest bid was 4.29 euro cents per kilowatt hour. The next round of tenders is already running. The deadline is February 1.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.