The Original Electricity Feed Law (Stromeinspeisungsgesetz) December 1990

The following is a translation of the actual text of the original German Electricity Feed Law or Stromeinspeisungsgesetz. I have long since forgotten who translated the text. My apologies to the translator. What is significant about the Electricity Feed-In Law, is its simplicity. This is the complete text. — Paul Gipe

Act on Feeding Renewable Energies into the Grid of 7 December 1990

Federal Law Gazette I p. 2663, last amended by article 3 of the Act of 24 April 1998 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 730, 734)

Section 1

Scope of application

This act shall regulate the purchase and price of electricity generated exclusively from hydropower, wind energy, solar energy, landfill gas, sewage gas or biomass in the area of validity of this act by public electricity utilities. It shall not cover electricity.

1. from hydro-power stations, landfill gas or sewage gas facilities or from facilities in which electricity is generated from biomass with an installed generator output of over 5 megawatts and

   Federal Republic of Germany, aLand, public electricity utilities or companies affiliated to them as defined in section 15 of the Stock Corporation Act, unless electricity from these facilities cannot be fed into an area supplied by these companies.

Electricity utilities which operate a system for the general supply are obliged to purchase the electricity generated from renewable energies in their supply area and to pay for the electricity fed into the system pursuant to section 3. For electricity from generation facilities not located in the area supplied by a system operator, this obligation shall apply to the utility which has the system suitable for receiving the electricity located closest to the site of the facility. Extra costs arising from sections 2 and 4 can be allocated in accounts to distribution or transmission and can be included in the setting of the price for third-party access.

1. For electricity from hydro-power, landfill gas, sewage gas and biomass, the price shall amount to at least 80 per cent of the average revenue per kilowatt-hour from the delivery of electricity by electricity utilities to all final consumers. For a hydro-power station, a landfill gas or sewage gas facility with an output of more than 500 kilowatts, this hall apply only to that part of the electricity fed in in the relevant accounting year which corresponds to the ratio of 500 kilowatts to the capacity of the facility in kilowatts; the capacity shall be ascertained by the annual average of the maximum actual power measured in the individual months. The price for the remaining electricity shall amount to at least 65 per cent of the average revenue pursuant to sentence 1.

    

2. For electricity from solar energy and wind energy, the payment shall be at least 90 per cent of the average revenue mentioned in paragraph 1 sentence 1.

    

3. The average revenue applying to pragraphs 1 and 2 shall be the figure published in the official statistics of the Federation for the respective calender year before last, excluding turn-over tax, in pfennigs per kilowatt-hour. When calculating the price pursuant to paragraphs 1 and 2, the amount shall be rounded to two places behind the decimal point.

 Hardship clause

1. To the extent that the kilowatt-hours to be paid for under this act exceed 5 per cent of the total kilowatt-hours sold by the electricity utility via its supply system in a calendar year, the upstream system operator shall be obliged to reimburse the extra costs arising from the kilowatt-hours exceeding this proportion to the electricity uitiliy purchasing the electricity. In the case of upstream system operators, these extra costs shall include the burden of the right to reim-bursement pursuant to sentence 1. If there is no upstream system operator, the electricity utility to which the preconditions listed in sentences 1 and 2 pertain shall be relieved of the obliga-tion contained in section 2 sentence 1 from the beginning of the calendar year following the time when these preconditons take effect for facilities which at that time were to a substantial extent not yet erected; for wind power facilities, this applies to the erection of the mast and the rotor.

    

2. The obligations pursuant to sections 2 and 3 shall not apply to the extent that adherence to them represents an unfair hardship even when the reimbursement rule pursuant to paragraph 1 has been applied. In this case, the obligations shall be transferred to the upstream system operator.

    

3. A case of unfair hardship shall particularly exist when the electricity utility would have to increase its electricity delivery prices tangibly above the prices of equivalent or upstream electricity utilities.

    

4. The Federal Ministry of Economics shall report to the German Bundestag at the latest in 1999, but in any case in sufficiently good time, about the impact of the hardship clause, so that before the consequences pursuant to paragraph 1 sentence 3 take effect, a different compensation rule can be made.

1. The Federal Government shall encourage the electricity utilities to enter into voluntary commitments for additional measures to increase the proportion of electricity generation from renewable energies and from the production of combined heat and power.

    

2. The Federal Government may, after hearing the groups involved, stipulate objectives to be achieved within an appropriate period. In each case, it will report to the German Bundestag after two years.

This act shall enter into force on 1 January 1991.