Auction results for innovative installation concepts and for solar installations on buildings and noise barriers
Year of issue 2022
Date of issue 2022.05.11
The Bundesnetzagentur has today announced the results of the innovation auction and the auction for solar installations to be mounted on buildings and noise barriers (solar power auction for the second segment). Both auctions closed for bids on 1 April 2022.
Bids with special solar installations accepted in the innovation auction
In the innovation auction, bids for combinations of renewable energy installations with different generating technologies (for instance a solar-storage combination) could be submitted. The auction was for a volume of 397 megawatts (MW). The round was slightly oversubscribed, with 45 bids comprising a volume of nearly 435 MW submitted.
For the first time, bids could be submitted for installation combinations with what are called special solar installations, which are installations on bodies of water, farmland or parking areas so as to enable dual use of those areas. The Bundesnetzagentur set the requirements to be placed on the special solar installations as from 1 October 2021.
Bids for combinations with special solar installations were given priority in this round. There were 13 such bids comprising a volume of 22 MW and all the bids were successful. They included 12 awards covering 21 MW on farmland and one award covering 1 MW on a parking area.
All bids were again exclusively for combinations of solar installations and storage facilities. No bids had to be excluded from the tendering procedure and a total of 43 bids with a combined volume of 403 MW were successful.
The award values ranged from 3.95 cents per kilowatt hour (ct/kWh) to 7.43 ct/kWh. The volume-weighted average award price was 5.42 ct/kWh, significantly higher than in the previous round, when it was 4.55 ct/kWh. Unlike in the technology-specific auctions, awards in the innovation auction are added to market revenue as a fixed amount, which means that the values are not comparable.
Solar auction significantly undersubscribed due to higher tender volume
The auction round for solar installations to be mounted on buildings and noise barriers was significantly undersubscribed, mainly because of the massively increased tender volume of 767 MW. In December 2021 the volume was only 150 MW. The volume of the bids submitted was 212 MW and thus only slighlty less than in the previous round (233 MW).
Out of the 171 bids that were submitted, 163 bids with a combined volume of 204 MW were successful. The prices of the successful bids in the pay-as-bid auction range from 7.00 ct/kWh to 8.91 ct/kWh. The volume-weighted average award price was 8.53 ct/kWh, significantly higher than in the previous round, when it was 7.43 ct/kWh.
Seven bids had to be excluded from the tendering procedure due to formal errors.
Further information
Results of the auctions have been published on the Bundesnetzagentur website at www.bnetza.de/innaus22-1 and www.bnetza.de/solaraufdach22-1.
The updated bidding round statistics will be published shortly.