In July, German grid authority, Bundesnetzagentur received registrations for 269.655 MW of PV capacity. According to its figures, released today, 224.646 MW comprised rooftop systems, while 45.009 MW represented ground-mounted arrays. Compared to June, this marks a slight decrease, where 342.5 MW were registered. Of this, 159 MW accounted for utility-scale arrays.
The data shows that of the 7,630 registered rooftop systems, only 5,315 with a cumulative capacity of 160 MW were actually commissioned in July. All other systems were either pre- or post-registrations.
The plant register further discloses that 44 new ground-mounted arrays with a commissioning date in July were registered. Reportedly, just four solar farms exceeding a capacity of 1 MW. The vast majority are ground-mounted arrays with a capacity that sits just short of the 750 kW bidding limit.
By contrast, the progress in Germany’s “Mieterstrom” (tenant electricity) is rather slow. In July, just 23 new projects with a cumulative capacity of 344 kW were registered. Only three of these were commissioned in July, while the rest were commissioned in previous months.
Since the introduction of the scheme in July 2017, just 162 PV systems of that type, with a cumulative capacity of 4 MW, have been registered with the Bundesnetzagentur.
The tenant electricity scheme allows tenants to directly purchase PV energy from their apartment block's roof or nearby C&I installations. Key to the scheme is the omission of grid charges, as the design does not use distribution grids.
Despite this, Germany is still on track to reach its target of adding 2,500 MW this year, the data suggests. In the first seven months, a cumulative capacity of 1,600 MW have been registered. Thus, the total PV capacity that has been installed since Germany’s introduction of a FIT-scheme (EEG) rose to 44,593 MW by the end of July.
The level of solar subsidies for rooftop systems, as well as the cap on proceeds from direct retail sales will be lowered by another percent for September. Thus, the fixed feed-in tariff for between 40 kW and 100 kW will be 10.39 euro cents per kWh.
For systems between 10 and 40 kW, the tariff is set at 11.62 euro cents, and for systems less than 10 kW, the tariff will be 11.95 euro cents. Arrays exceeding 100 kW are required to sell their electricity directly to the market, and can expect to receive tariffs of between 8.27 and 12.35 euro cents per kWh.
In October, both the subsidies and tariffs are expected to fall by another percent again.
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Germany installed 8x that much in December of 2011, let’s keep things in perspective.
Germany will be a massive battery storage market. Retail electricity rates are like .29/kWh, with the fit only paying 11 cents, there’s massive incentive to store electricity.