Cross-bor­der auc­tions

The national rules implementing these auctions can be found in the Cross-border Renewable Energy Ordinance (Grenzüberschreitende-Erneuerbare-Energien-Verordnung), the following is a non-official version providing the underlying reasoning.

Opened auctions for photovoltaic installations as agreed with the Kingdom of Denmark

The governments of the Kingdom of Denmark and of the Federal Republic of Germany have agreed to conduct opened auctions for photovoltaic installations in 2016. In the case of such opened auctions, the Contracting States will each issue their own payment entitlements for electricity from solar installations. The terms and conditions for auctions and payments described in the following apply only to ground-mounted photovoltaic installations for which funding is granted under German law.

For information about the auctions held by the Danish side, please click here. The public tender overview site with all instructions for the Danish tender deadline on December 8th, 2016 is available here.

The following can only serve as a broad overview of the procedure. In cases of doubt, the provisions of the Cross-border Renewable Energy Ordinance and of the international agreement shall apply.

The purpose of the auctioning procedure is to determine the amount of paymentsfor electricity from ground-mounted installations on the basis of bids. Bids are made

• in the form of the reference value to be considered in the calculation of the sliding market premium in Euro cents per kilowatt hour (bidding price) to be set by the bidder and
• for a certain amount of capacity (to be indicated in kilowatts) which the installation is capable of delivering (bid volume). The bidding volume corresponds to the rated capacity of the photovoltaic modules (peak value in kilowatts).

Bids are accepted starting with the lowest offer, up to the point where the total volume auctioned in this respective round has been reached; the final bid to be accepted is accepted in total. Under the uniform pricing mechanism that applies, the price of the highest bid to be accepted determines the award price for all other bids.

Financial support

Support for installations is granted in accordance with the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and the Cross-border Renewable Energy Ordinance.

When calculating the market premium for installations located in Denmark, it is important to note that the market premium for Danish locations shall be calculated monthly on the basis of Nordpool hourly contracts. The decision as to whether payments are reduced in the case of negative prices shall be taken based on the price of hourly contracts traded on the electricity spot market for the price zone in which the installation is located.

As German law applies, no "Guarantees of Origin" (Herkunftsnachweise) shall be issued for the electricity generated in installations that receive funding. Throughout the entire funding period, the electricity generated by these installations may not be used for self-supply. This also applies in case of a change of ownership of the installation.