Germany to tender another 1.5 GW of solar power

From pv magazine Germany

Germany’s Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) has announced that it will soon launch an additional tender to deploy 1.5 GW of PV capacity.

The deadline to submit project proposals will be set for Jan. 15, 2023. In this so-called “crisis tender,” projects must not exceed 100 MW in size. The selected PV projects will have to reach completion within nine months after securing feed-in premium tariffs.

The German Solar Association (BSW-Solar) had previously criticized the time limit for the construction of the systems, claiming that the period is too short. BSW-Solar is also calling for existing land restrictions to be relaxed. A number of federal states have yet to open up a lot of arable land and grassland areas in disadvantaged parts of the country for the construction of PV plants, it said. Those kinds of potential development sites are still very limited, it added.

In recent months, the Bundesnetzagentur was unable to allocate all of the planned capacity in its solar tenders. In the latest exercise, held in June, it only allocated 700 MW out of the original plan for 1,126 MW.