Germany

The new bidding round includes incentives for projects on agricultural and grassland areas in disadvantaged regions such as Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg for the first time.

According to provisional statistics from German institute IRW, PV systems in Germany have provided approximately 3.3 billion kWh in March, up 35% from the same month a year earlier and 118% from February 2017.

Video interview: Dirk Uwe Sauer, Professor of storage system technologies at RWTH Aachen, speaks about the future of batteries at the Energy Storage Europe 2017

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.

The German federal government has unveiled its proposal to support solar power installation for tenants living in rented housing (Mietestrom). The support will be capped at 500 MW total installed capacity per year, and limited to PV systems up to 100 kW.

Gigawatts a-go-go this week as Turkey, Algeria and Vietnam all toy with those magical GWs, while in more mature markets German storage figures provided reasons for optimism and Blattner Energy took the top spot for U.S. EPCs.

The South Korean solar firm will supply its Q.Plus modules to German services provider Adler Solar to install at older solar sites in need of upgrade and repowering. The option remains open for Adler to upgrade the supply deal to 30 MW.

The increase in new installations was mainly due to a 40% drop in prices over the past three years. German solar association Bundesverbands Solarwirtschaft expects their number will double to 100,000 in 2018.

The German EPC contractor is currently installing the largest battery storage system in Saxony, eastern Germany. The battery is expected to come online in the second quarter of this year.

Germany has registered 117 MW of new PV installations in January. The country’s cumulative PV capacity has reached approximately 41.34 GW.