The German Federal Network Agency BNetzA has awarded 677MW to renewables projects in its first ever innovation tender, which was oversubscribed.
The innovation auction has a different design to BNetzA’s onshore wind and solar tenders, such as no support for negative prices and fixed instead of moving market premiums.
It also allowed bids combining renewable energy systems, as well as energy storage.
Bids totalling 1095MW were received for the 650MW on offer in the innovation tender.
Of these, 50 bids (310MW) related to individual solar systems and 83 bids (785MW) related to system combinations.
Due to formal errors the agency excluded 14 bids amounting to 71MW.
A total of 73 bids were successful with a total capacity of 677MW.
Twenty-eight projects totalling 394MW were plant combinations, 27 of which consist of solar combined with storage.
Prices for combined projects ranged from €19.40 a megawatt-hour to €55.20/MWh, with the volume-weighted average €45/MWh.
BNetzA said that contrast to the standard tendering, this type of funding is added to the market revenue so that the values cannot be compared with the values of the standard tendering.
A separate onshore wind tender for 367MW attracted 25 bids totalling 310MW.
Prices ranged from €61.7/MWh to €62.0/MWh.
A solar tender for 257MW was significantly oversubscribed, attracting 163 bids for 675MW.
A total of 75 bids for 258MW were accepted, by the agency.
Prices ranged from €48.0/MWh to €53.90/MWh with the volume-weighted average was €52.2/MWh.
The next tender dates for onshore and solar wind energy will take place on 1 October and 1 December 2020
The next innovation call will take place next year.