Prices in auctions for rooftop solar PV in Germany remain around EUR 90/MWh

At the beginning of June, the second auction round this year to support the construction of solar PV installations on rooftops and noise barriers took place in Germany. The second round was very similar to the first, both in terms of the volume of projects submitted and the prices awarded. The average awarded price even edged up slightly, remaining nearly twice the level for ground-mounted installations.

In the second auction round this year for solar PV installations built on rooftops and noise barriers, the German regulator offered a total of 258 MW of capacity. The volume of projects submitted was also very similar to that in the first round, at nearly 362 MW. As in the previous round, competition was relatively healthy, with the volume of bids exceeding the auction volume by approximately 100 MW. However, the regulator had to exclude 19 bids from the auction.

A total of 119 projects with a combined installed capacity of 258.6 MW were ultimately successful in the auction. Developers secured minimum guaranteed prices ranging from 79.5 to 101.9 EUR/MWh. The weighted average awarded price was 89.4 EUR/MWh, almost unchanged from the 89.2 EUR/MWh recorded in the February round.

The picture is somewhat different from auctions for ground-mounted solar PV, which are clearly dominated by projects in Bavaria. The largest number of successful projects were in the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia (83 MW) and Lower Saxony (31 MW). As in the previous round, Bavaria came third, with 23 MW.

According to the regulator, projects with a capacity of between 1 and 20 MW were eligible to participate in the auction. Around two-thirds of the successful projects were installations with a capacity of up to 2 MW. The largest project submitted to the auction, according to the regulator, planned an installed capacity of 10 MW.