New Solar Capacity of 107.622 MWp in December 2014, Total of 38,236 MWp

Published on February 6, 2015 in Electricity, Renewable and Solar. 7 Comments Tags: , , .

New solar capacity in December amounted to 107.622 MWp, bringing solar capacity eligible for support under the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) to a total of 38,236 MWp at the end of 2014, the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) informed.

1. New PV Installations

Compared with December 2013 (166,023 MWp) new capacity was down 35.18%. This is less than the declines in the last three months, though (November 2013 51.56%, October 2014 67% and September 2014 62.57%). New capacity in 2014 in total amounted to 1.894,76 MWp. This is blow the 2,500 MWp target in the EEG 2014, considerably lower than the 3,302.826 MWp added in 2013, and much lower than in the three solar boom years 2010 to 2012 in which well over 7,000 MWp were added each year (for more information, please see here).

While solar PV growth in 2013 and at the beginning of 2014 was already considerably slower than in these boom years, the amendment of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) that entered into force on 1 August 2014 may have further contributed to slowing down solar growth (for more information on the changes the EEG 2014 brought, please see here). Onshore wind, on the other hand, was way above the EEG 2014 planning . In 2014 new onshore wind power turbines with a total capacity of 4,750 MW were installed, easily exceeding the growth target of 2,500 MW net annually introduced with the EEG 2014 amendment. Even discounting a dismantling of some 364 MW net onshore wind energy growth of about 4,386 MW remains 75% higher than planned.

Based on the information published by BNetzA (please note that figures may subsequently be, and have repeatedly been, corrected upon new information without leading to a new publication of the monthly figures), the December 2014 capacity additions lead to the following table of German PV capacity eligible for financial support pursuant to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG).

Year Month MWp MWp
Total solar capacity by end of 2009 10,566
Total solar capacity in the period of 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2014 27.670
01/2014 192.974*
02/2014 110.341*
03/2014 155.712*
04/2014 162.773*
05/2014 203.669*
06/2014 188.156*
07/2014 342.307*
08/2014 140.002*
09/2014 109.841*
10/2014 75.395*
11/2014 105.966
12/2014  107.622
Installed in 2014 1,894,758
Total solar capacity by 31 December 2014 38.236

* corrected figures

2. New Feed-in Tariffs/Market Premiums

The remuneration (feed-in tariff or market premium) is reduced monthly for new PV plants, depending on additionally installed capacity. Under the EEG 2014 newly commissioned renewable power plants are only eligible for fixed feed-in tariffs if they are small plants in the sense of Section 37 EEG 2014 (i.e. plants up to 500 kWp in 2015 and up to 100 kWp as of 2016). Power generated by all other renewable power plants has to be sold directly by the operator who can claim a market premium (cf. Section 34 EEG 2014).

As PV capacity growth was below the target corridor of between 2,400 and 2,600 MWp per year, the monthly reduction of applicable market premiums/feed-in tariffs has again been reduced to 0.25% instead of the regular monthly degression of 0.5% (Sec. 31 EEG 2014) for the first three months of 2015:

Solar Feed-in Tariffs
Small Installations up to 500 kWp
§ 51(2) EEG 2014 (Roofs/Noise Walls) § 51(1) EEG 2014 (Other)
up to 10 KWp up to 40 kWp up to 500 kWp up to 500 kWp
Start of Operations
from 01.01.2015 (0.25% degression) 12.56 12.22 10.92 8.70
from 01.02.2015 (0.25% degression) 12.53 12.18 10.90 8.68
from 01.03.2015 (0.25% degression) 12.50 12.15 10.87 8.65

 

Solar Market Premium
Compulsory from 500 kWp
§ 51(2) EEG 2014 (Roofs/Noise Walls) § 51(1) EEG 2014 (Other)
up to 10 KWp up to 40 kWp up to 1 MWp up to 10 MWp up to 10 MWp
Start of Operations
from 01.01.2015 (0.25% degression) 12.95 12.61 11.32 9.09 9.09
from 01.02.2015 (0.25% degression) 12.92 12.58 11.29 9.07 9.07
from 01.03.2015 (0.25% degression) 12.89 12.55 11.26 9.05 9.05

Details on the calculation for the remuneration for January to March 2015 can be found here (in German).

[onshore wind figures added]

Source: Federal Network Agency

Related posts:

by Mutthias Leng and Annute Leng

7 Responses to “New Solar Capacity of 107.622 MWp in December 2014, Total of 38,236 MWp”

Feed for this Entry
Comments are currently closed.

↓