In December, Germany succeeded in attracting enough bidders to fully subscribe all tendered capacity, but now the country must once again register a large deficit of projects: Only 523 of the tendered 900 MW were allocated, reports German Federal network agency Bundesnetzagentur.

A total of 67 bids were submitted for a combined capacity of 527 MW. Most of these pertain to the gusty federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, which after a longer period of skepticism now appears to have taken the technology into its grace.

This takes place through, among other things, an announcement that the state doesn’t intend to comply with Berlin’s minimum distance requirement of 1 kilometer to the nearest cluster of four or more residencies. The Northern German state accounted for 14 bids totaling 103 MW; 6 MW more than Northern Rhine-Westphalia.

The authority’s lacking choice options have once again penetrated prices. After a little slide to EUR 0.611 per kWh from the preceding, oversubscribed tender, the current tariff once again approaches the maximum, which in 2020 is set to EUR 0.062 per kWh.

The average of the latest tender was EUR 0.0618 per kWh. Apparently, however, one bidder has overestimated the consequences of the preceding tender. At any rate, Bundesnetzagentur reports that – despite a total average of merely EUR 0.0002 below the maximum limit – bids were made as low as EUR 0.0576 per kWh.

One of the consequences of Germany’s debility is also clearly illustrated in Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s (BNEF) Tuesday report ranking the top wind OEMs in 2019.  

BNEF reported that Nordex and Enercon’s market shares, measured in installed capacity, from 23 percent in 2018 to 13 percent last year. Enercon took the brunt of the blow, as it only managed to erect 1,369 MW during the period and is thus no longer among the world’s top wind turbine manufacturers.

German capacity build-out falls short of lowest estimate  

Danish wind broke record in 2019  

The training wheels are off – now to raise the bar 

Germany aims to remedy wind sector's big problem  

Poland reaffirms milder winds