Germany FIT – WIND WORKS

Fastned Charging near Freiburg Germany by Matthias von Bank 01

Reading the press or comments these days in French or English, the tone about Germany’s energy policies is a mix of the gleeful (of the “schadenfreude” kind) and the contemptuous. Germany was naive (to trust Putin), mercantilist / corrupt (its elite selling their soul or themselves for the “cheap gas” that its industry craves), or in thrall to the perverse ideology of the “commie greens” (who pushed to close nuclear and promote useless renewables).

While it is clear that the current situation, with Russia wilfully reducing gas volumes to Europe, hits Germany quite hard, and will impose harsh choices on its industry and population this year, how much of the above criticism makes sense?

The new provisions are part of the new version of the country’s renewable energy law, which was approved today by the German parliament.

As of July 1, 2022, renewable energy generation in Germany will no longer be paid for directly via people’s power bills but from a state fund.

Germany’s cumulative installed PV capacity for all subsidized and unsubsidized PV systems stood at around 58.2 GW by the end of March.

Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action

Germany’s economy and climate ministry today announced a more ambitious target of clean energy making up 80% of its power mix by 2030 – a bump up from its previous target of 65%. Currently, 40.9% of Germany’s power mix consists of clean energy.

Germany has come up with new measures that could lead to a cumulative installed PV capacity of 215GW by 2030. Higher feed-in tariffs for rooftop PV will likely be announced soon.

German utility service provider Trianel said today that it will expand its offering of short-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) to include solar photovoltaic (PV) plants from the second quarter of this year.

Germany’s new government has set some very ambitious targets for 2030.

Anyone in Germany who wants to put a small-scale PV system into operation in November 2021 must expect electricity generation costs of €0.1152 ($0.13)/kWh and a feed-in tariff (FIT) of €0.0703/kWh.

In June alone, new PV systems totaling 430 MW were connected to the German grid. The country’s cumulative operational PV capacity reached 55.3 GW at the end of June.