Germany’s KfW granted incentives to 3,200 solar storage projects so far this year

As of the end of May 2017, Germany’s KfW Development Bank had accepted 3,200 incentive applications for storage systems combined with PV installations.

A spokesman of the KfW told pv magazine that demand for storage systems under the incentive scheme remains stable and at a high level, without specifying how much more applications could be potentially filed by the end of 2017 through the financial resources allocated by the German Ministry of Finance for the scheme for this year. It is very likely, however, that available funds will be prematurely depleted in 2017.

The repayment subsidy, which was reduced to 19% at the beginning of 2017, will be further reduced by another 3% starting from the beginning of July. The KfW said that the subsidy reduction was conceived to enable a larger volume of storage capacity.

Last year, KfW approved 6,500 loans and repayment subsidies for PV+storage systems for a total amount of €105 million. Close to 5,700 applications were filed for battery storage in combination with a newly installed PV system; 800 of these were for storage to be retrofitted on to an existing installation.

In October, KfW had to place the subsidy (not the loans) on hold, as the funds for the whole of 2016 had been exhausted.

A total of €30 million has been set aside to fund the subsidy for 2017.