Germany adds 122.5 MW of solar in February

After the year-end rally, Germany goes back to a moderate growth trend. Of the 122.5 MW installed in February, 50 MW comes from large-scale PV installations selected through the country’s auction scheme.

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Germany’s solar market resumes its moderate growth trend after the end-year really registered in December 2016. Grid operator Bundesnetzagentur reports that PV systems with a combined capacity of 122.5 MW were registered in February. Of these installations, 48.9 MW is from 12 operational ground-mounted PV plants developed under Germany’s auction scheme for large-scale solar. The remaining 73.5 MW comes from 4,194 small-sized PV systems. According to the statistics, however, of these smaller systems only 58.9 MW were connected to the grid in February.

In January, new installations totaled 117.3 MW, but ground-mounted PV plants reached only 3.4 MW. Moreover, 446 systems totaling 75.3 MW registered in January were connected to the grid in December.

Adjusted for these factors, newly installed capacity for January was of only approximately 30 MW. Compared to this small increase, February’s performance is undoubtedly a good improvement.

This was probably due to the fact that many developers, which had completed their projects in January, had decided to connect their systems to the grid later in February, expecting a 1.5% FIT raise which will never materlialised, due to the high volumes registered in December.

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For December 2016, the Bundesnetzagenturer reported a newly registered PV capacity of 450 MW.

The FIT for April will remain at the same level of the past months. The FIT for rooftop systems up to 10 kW will be of €0.1230 ($0.1314) per kWh, while systems up to 40 kW and installations up to 100 kW will have access to a FIT of €0.1196 ($0.1278) and €0.1069 ($0.1142) per kWh, respectively. These lowered tariffs were introduced by the German government with the new renewable energy law (EEG 2017) at the beginning of this year.

Since September 2015 there was no more FIT digression, due to the fact that the government's desired expansion corridor of 2.5GW per year was not reached. The revenue cap for PV installations up to 100 kW is currently ranging from €0.0891 and €0.1270 per kWh.

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