Germany has awarded contracts to 490MW of solar-plus-storage projects in its latest “innovation” auction for co-located renewables.
The Bundesnetzagentur (German Federal Network Agency) said the auction was more than four times oversubscribed, having received 163 bids for over 2,182MW of proposed capacity. The original auction offered contracts for 486MW of new capacity.
The successful projects were awarded at prices ranging from 4.79 cents/kWh to 5.59 cents/kWh, with a volume-weighted average of 5.31 cents/kWh. Bavaria was awarded the most capacity of any state (11 projects with 122MW of combined capacity), followed by Schleswig-Holstein and Brandenburg with around 50MW each.
The average price was “considerably lower” than the previous innovation tender auction, which closed at 6.15 cents/kWh and was also around four times oversubscribed, the Bundesnetzagentur said.
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The last three innovation auctions have seen substantial price drops; the October 2024 round settled at an average of 7.45 cents/kWh, which then fell to 6.15 cents in July and 5.31 cents in this most recent iteration.
The last auction, in July, also set a record as the first time bids exceeded 2GW in cumulative capacity, Bundesnetzagentur president Klaus Müller said at the time. That record was exceeded this time around.
The falling prices, fierce competition and high demand speak to the economics of renewable energy in Germany. While the auction was issued for any co-located renewable energy or energy storage projects, all of the successful bids were for solar-plus-storage.
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