Results of the auction for solar farms that ended on 1 March 2024
Year of issue 2024
Date of issue 2024.04.30
The Bundesnetzagentur has today announced the successful bids in the auction that ended on 1 March 2024 for ground-mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) installations and solar installations on, affixed to or in a construction that is neither a building nor a noise barrier ("first-segment solar installations").
"The auction was again very well subscribed. The bid volume has been well above the auction volume for the past four rounds. Although the volumes auctioned have increased, competition in this segment is stable,"
said Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur.
Successful bid prices similar to previous round
The auction round that ended on 1 March 2024 was very significantly oversubscribed. The statutory expansion targets meant that the auction volume had increased from 1,611 megawatts (MW) in the previous round to 2,231 MW. There were 569 bids with a combined volume of 4,100 MW. A total of 326 bids with a combined volume of 2,234 MW were successful.
The prices of the successful bids in the pay-as-bid auction ranged from 3.62 cents per kilowatt hour (ct/kWh) to 5.49 ct/kWh. The average volume-weighted award price in this round was 5.11 ct/kWh, which was similar to that of the previous round (5.17 ct/kWh).
A total of 39 bids had to be excluded from the auction due to formal errors. This was 7% of all the bids submitted and so again at a low level.
Distribution of the bids
The federal state with by far the most volume awarded was, as in previous rounds, Bavaria (806 MW, 156 winning bids), followed by Schleswig-Holstein (221 MW, 17 winning bids) and Lower Saxony (199 MW, 20 winning bids).
Most successful bids went to projects that are planned alongside motorways and railway lines (141 winning bids for a total of 1,058 MW). The category with the second largest volume of winning bids was farmland or grassland in what are known as disadvantaged areas (127 winning bids for a total of 792 MW). These areas cannot be readily used for agricultural purposes and are therefore particularly suitable for PV installations.
Next steps
Information on the next steps concerning the auction for first-segment solar installations that ended on 1 March 2024 is available on the Bundesnetzagentur's website at www.bundesnetzagentur.de/solarausschreibungen24-1 (in German).
The updated bidding round statistics will be published shortly.
The next auction for first-segment solar installations will close for bids on 1 July 2024.