A real rush: wind power expansion is picking up momentum again

Monday, December 21, 2020

A real rush
Wind power expansion is gaining momentum again

The expansion of wind power in Germany has stagnated for a long time. But now, shortly after the EEG reform, a breath of fresh air is blowing through the industry. There is a real rush for tenders for new systems.

The lull in onshore wind power may have been overcome. The public tender for this green electricity technology is, similar to solar energy, significantly oversubscribed for the first time this year, as the Federal Network Agency announced. On December 1, almost 367,000 kilowatts of wind power were tendered and 96 bids with a volume of around 657,000 kilowatts were submitted.

A total of 58 bids for almost 400,000 kilowatts were accepted, three were excluded due to formal errors. Most of the wind farm projects went to Schleswig-Holstein (31), followed by North Rhine-Westphalia (11) and Lower Saxony (8). The average bid price fell from 6.11 cents per kilowatt hour to 5.91 cents.

In this round, the upper limit of the grid expansion area was almost completely exhausted: 286,000 kilowatts were submitted for 178,000 kilowatts advertised. The grid expansion area limits the expansion of wind in regions predominantly in northern Germany, where a lot of green electricity is already being produced, but at the same time bottlenecks regularly occur due to the lack of power grids.

Also great interest in solar power

The solar tender was again very clearly oversubscribed. As of December 1, 186 bids with a volume of 936,000 kilowatts were submitted, only just under 257,000 kilowatts were advertised. 45 bids for 264,000 kilowatts were awarded, 13 of which were on arable and grassland areas in Bavaria. The average bid price fell from 5.23 cents per kilowatt hour to 5.10 cents. 42 photovoltaic bids were excluded from the process, including 16 that were received too late.

The network agency justified a larger number of exclusions by clearly exceeding the permitted bid amount. This was "probably in view of the changing legal situation", so the authority with a view to the amendment to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) confirmed by the Federal Council on Friday. The next tender under the new EEG rules for onshore wind energy will take place on February 1, 2021 and the next for solar systems that are not installed on buildings on March 1, 2021.