In the wake of Germany moving the allocation of most of its renewables support to tenders, the federal grid agency BNetzA has launched its first onshore wind round with an 800MW auction that has a 2 May 2017 deadline.

“With the tendering system for wind turbines on land, after solar plants also payments for the technology with the strongest expansion will be allocated by competition,” BNetzA president Jochen Homann says.

“Our experiences made with solar tenders will render fast and legally secure results also with wind.”

Germany since 2015 has carried out a series of pilot tenders for ground-based PV arrays that have resulted in a rapid fall in prices compared to those of support granted through fixed feed-in tariffs.

Plants with more than 750kW that have been registered with the agency three weeks ahead of the deadline can participate.

The first auction operates a €70 ($73.91)/MWh price cap for projects at reference locations with optimal conditions. The lowest bids win.

Only 258MW of the overall 800MW in capacity can be allocated to projects in so-called grid-bottleneck areas in the windiest coastal regions of Northern Germany, where the overall annual expansion has been limited to 902MW per year.

Citizen-led or co-operative wind projects enjoy certain special conditions such as getting more time to complete wind parks in the case of a win, or being able to participate in tenders even before being granted a building permit.

Germany from this year through 2019 plans to allocate support for 2.8GW per year in new onshore wind projects through tenders, followed by an annual 2.9GW from 2020 on.

Information and the necessary forms to participate can be found here

Wind

Germany launches 800MW onshore wind tender