Bundesnetzagentur

Germany has concluded a new renewables tender, securing 408 MW of capacity at an average price of €0.0833 ($0.09)/kWh.

The German authorities say that the country’s new 1.5 GW tender is a response to the current energy crisis. Selected PV projects will have to reach completion within nine months after securing feed-in premium tariffs.

The newly installed PV capacity for the first eight months of the year was 3.6 GW, which compares to 3.2 GW in the same period of 2020.

The first eight months of the year have brought 3.2 GW of new generation capacity, compared to 2.7 GW in the same period of last year.

Only one of the 28 hybrid renewable energy plants allocated in the oversubscribed exercise did not feature solar, and PV took all the awards in the single-technology section of the procurement round.

Clean energy power plants will figure prominently as Queensland and Victoria bid to reset their economies for a post-coronavirus world. France suffered a hit to its new solar deployment figures in the first half of a Covid-hit year but its neighbor appears to have no such concerns.

Federal network agency the Bundesnetzagentur has announced it will retire 4 GW of coal-fired generation capacity through the exercise, which will see plant operators compete to secure one-off payments in return for shuttering, or converting operations.

The extraordinary measure of not publishing the results of successful project bids – brought in during the Covid-19 crisis – is set to be lifted from September, when the projects allocated in procurement rounds over the last five months will be made public.

The long-awaited procurement exercise includes 250 MW of generation capacity originally intended to be tendered last year.

Plus, there is hope of a bright new dawn with proposed legislative changes in Europe and the U.S. even as the solar equipment industry hits new lows and cyber attacks reportedly increase in frequency.