German Renewables Surcharge Increases by 19% to 6.24 ct/kWh in 2014

Published on October 15, 2013 in Electricity and Renewable. 8 Comments Tags: , .

The renewables surcharge will amount to 6.24 ct/kWh (plus 19% VAT) in 2014. This is an increase of 19.38% from the 5.227 ct/kWh in 2013.

With the renewables surcharge pursuant to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), the so-called EEG surcharge, consumers pay for the difference between the fixed feed-in tariffs paid pursuant to EEG for renewable energy fed into the grids and the sale of the renewable energy at the EPEX Spot power exchange by the TSOs. According to data by the TSOs renewable energy renewable energy fetched on average 32.99 EUR/MWh in September.

The EEG surcharge has been calculated by independent experts on behalf of the TSOs. For 2014 the TSOs predict another significant rise of renewable input by approximately 15 TWh from roughly 135 TWh to almost 150 TWh, mainly due to more input from onshore and offshore wind power plants and PV plants.

The TSOs foresee costs of EUR 21.7 billion for renewables in 2014, with proceeds from sales of renewable energy of EUR 2.2 billion. In addition to the resulting deficit of EUR 19.4 billion, a EUR 2.2 billion difference between the EUR surcharge for 2013 and the actual costs from 2013 and EUR 1.9 billion liquidity reserve will have to be borne by electricity consumers. As a result, EEG related costs in the amount of EUR 23.6 billion arising in 2014 will have to be passed on to the German electricity customers.

From the 2014 EEG surchcarge, 2.4 ct will be attributable to PV, 1.3 ct to biomass, 1 ct to onshore wind, 0.3 ct to offshore wind, and 0.1 ct to the other renewable energy sources. The remaining EEG surcharge costs are caused inter alia by the divergence of the actual costs from the predictions, the liquidity reserve and the retrofitting of PV power plants in order to prevent the 50.2 Hertz problem.

The EEG surcharge has steadily and often steeply risen over the last years (a table showing the development of the EEG surcharge can be found here), due to growing input of renewable power that enjoys priority in the German grids.

Earlier predictions of the EEG surcharge increase had been as high as 6.5 ct/kWh. The renewed increase is likely to influence decisions of the next German government to deal with the costs of renewable energy.

Source: EEG-KWK.net; EEG-KWK.net press release

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by Mutthias Leng

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