Only solar projects won in Germany’s latest combined wind and solar tender for 200MW of capacity as no bids were made for wind projects, the country’s federal networks agency (BNetzA) said.
The average price for winning solar bids fell slightly, to €53.30 ($58.52) per megawatt hour of electricity produced, compared to an average price of €54.00 in the last such auction in November.
With bids totaling 553MW, the auction was again clearly oversubscribed.
“The results of the joint tender show a bright and a dark side. The expansion volume on offer again was oversubscribed only through bids for solar installations,” said Kerstin Andreae, chairwoman of the federation of energy and water industries (BDEW).
The makes clear that in the middle of the corona crisis, there is an industry that wants to invest.”
But wind energy is in the shadows, she added, as no single wind project bid in the auction.
“To reach the renewable energy target of 65% in the power mix, the expansion of wind on land needs to get moving again. It is now the turn of the federal states to support this expansion, which is to say not to issue regulations that restrict the potential wind expansion areas through rigid distance regulations.”
The government on Monday had said that an agreement had been reached between the two main parliamentary groups of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition to allow states in an ‘opt-in’ procedure to decide themselves whether to introduce a 1km minimum distance between new wind projects and the nearest settlement.
Such a rule – so far only existing in the state of Bavaria in an even more rigid form – has shown to bring new wind installations to a near standstill.
