Germanys Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) has today published the solar PV unit price delivered by the third German tender for ground-mounted systems at 0.08/kWh.
This unit price bests the 0.0849/kWh set during the second tender last year, and was achieved without the need for the clearing process (which is usually reserved for when successful bidders have more than 30 MW of solar projects in the tender).
The Bundesnetzagentur confirmed that it received 43 aggregated bids amounting to a total of 204 MW of new solar PV capacity. Three of the bids received came from private individuals, and a further two came from civic authorities in Germany.
"The unit value achieved is significantly below the value of the second round," said the Federal Network Agency president Jochen Homann. "This is followed by strong competition to promote ground-mounted systems."
Homann added that it was encouraging to see that many "different actors" were awarded projects, including a handful of private individuals.
In its preliminary evaluation of the third round bids, the Bundesnetzagentur found that the general range of bids received fell between 0.09 and 0.11/kWh, which served to reveal that bids received in the second tender did not meet the true marginal costs for ground-mounted PV in Germany. The authority said, however, that very few bids were received that fell short of the marginal costs and thus did not affect the result.
Germany has set a date of April 1 for the fourth tender, with authorities poised publish all relevant bidding details in February. This fourth tender will have a limit of 125 MW and will form part of the annual tender limit of 400 MW set by government. Last year, Germany set a 500 MW limit, but so far none of those successful bids have yet been connected to the grid.
Given the strike price achieved in this third tender, few expect the successful bids this time around to move any more quickly. Companies that have secured this unit price have 24 months in which to construct and connect their solar projects.
"We will be closely monitoring whether solar systems are actually built at this level of funding," added Homann.
Edited and translated by Ian Clover.
Popular content
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.
Share
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.