Covid-19 weekly round-up: Australian states target green recovery as France devotes €30bn to energy transition
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.
Germany launches first auction of coal-exit compensation payments
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.
Germany reinstates regular solar tender schedule
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.
Germany launches 650 MW tender for ‘innovative’ renewables
The long-awaited procurement exercise includes 250 MW of generation capacity originally intended to be tendered last year.
Covid-19 weekly round-up: Module prices fall as big solar starts to recover in Germany
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.
Easing of Covid lockdown helped German big solar in May
The nation added a year-high of almost 450 MW of new capacity during the month to take the five-month total for 2020 to 1,926 MW. The solar subsidy will fall another 1.4% from tomorrow.
German solar tender settles average power price of €0.0527/kWh
The federal network agency allocated 96.3 MW of solar in a procurement round which saw the solar power price nudge up slightly.
Covid-19 weekly round-up: It is still unclear how the crisis will play out on various solar segments, although one US installer says business has never been better…
Module price falls driven by the energy demand slump and Chinese oversupply may reverse at the end of the year, Germany appears immune to the Covid rooftop curse and emergency funding has been offered up to EU businesses affected by the crisis.
Germany installed 380 MW of solar in April
The rooftop segment maintained strong growth but utility scale PV saw a slowdown on previous months. In the first four months of 2020, newly deployed PV systems added up to 1,479.5 MW of generation capacity, compared with around 1.6 GW in the same period of last year. The nation’s cumulative PV capacity hit 50.46 GW at the end of April.
Solar sweeps the board again in German renewables auction
Not one wind power project was submitted to the German network authority for the April round of a national clean energy procurement program. Almost 204 MW of solar generation capacity was allocated across 30 solar projects with an average final electricity price of €0.053/kWh.
