The hoped-for recovery of Germany's photovoltaic market has been dashed.
In June, just 7,078 new PV systems with a total capacity of 188.6 MW were registered with the Federal Network Agency even less than had been built in January. According to the government regulator, the new installed PV capacity in the first half of the year will amount to about 1,015 MW.
Germany's revamped Renewable Energy Act (EEG) goes into effect on Friday and it will bring some changes to PV feed-in tariffs as well as to market premium model payments.
Some media outlets had inaccurately reported rising remuneration rates in recent days, but the Federal Network Agency has now published the new rates: Beginning in August, PV rooftop systems up to 10 kW will receive 0.1275 per kilowatt hour. Rooftop systems up to 40 kW will receive 0.1240 per kilowatt hour while systems up to 500 kW will get 0.1109 per kilowatt hour. PV installations on non-residential buildings and ground-mounted systems up to 500 kW will be paid 0.0883 per kilowatt hour.
The PV feed-in tariffs will then be reduced by a further 0.5% following adjustment for the monthly degression level in September to between 0.0879 and 0.1269 per kilowatt hour. The EEG has reduced the level of degression from 1% to 0.5%. The target range for new annual installations has nevertheless likewise been reduced from 2.5 to 3.5 GW to the 2.4 and 2.6 GW.
Direct marketing for all PV installations with a capacity of more than 500 kW will be mandatory as of August but also available to operators of smaller systems. According to the Federal Network Agency, direct marketing rates for rooftop systems up to 10 kW will be 0.1315 per kilowatt hour and 0.1280 per kilowatt hour for systems up to 40 kW. Rooftop systems between 40 kW and 1 MW will receive 0.1149 per kilowatt hour while ground-mounted systems up to 10 MW will receive 0.0923 per kilowatt hour. The market premium model's revenue cap will also be lowered by 0.5% in September.
Translated by Edgar Meza
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.