Germany awards 2.7GW onshore wind power deals in ‘record’ auction

The country’s federal network agency, the Bundesnetzagentur, had looked to award contracts for up to 2,709MW of onshore wind capacity. It received an-all time high volume of bids that totalled more than 2.9GW. It ultimately awarded contracts to 230 projects with a combined capacity of 2,723MW. 

Successful developers secured power deals ranging between €57.30 and €73.50/MWh – the ceiling price of the auction – with a volume-weighted average of €73.30/MWh. That was the same average price as the most recent onshore wind auction in July.

The federal network agency pointed out that the auction was the first time since February 2022 that an onshore wind tender in Germany had been oversubscribed, reversing the trend of a series of undersubscribed wind auctions in the country. 

The German government aims to have renewables meet at least 80% of the country’s electricity consumption by 2030. It estimates that this will require about 115GW of onshore wind capacity by then. It currently has more than 69GW of installed wind energy capacity, most of which is onshore, according to Windpower Intelligence, the research and data division of Windpower Monthly. 

“This tender is a record. The bid volume in this round is higher than ever before: the bid volume of almost 3GW significantly exceeds the volume of 2.5GW required to achieve the annual expansion target,” said Klaus Müller, president of the Bundesnetzagentur. 

States in the north and west of Germany continued to dominate in the geographical distribution of the new projects awarded power deals in the tender. 

North Rhine-Westphalia secured the most with 756MW of capacity across 84 deals awarded. It was followed by Brandenburg (385MW across 23 contracts), Schleswig-Holstein (285MW across 24 contracts), Hesse (246MW across 8 contracts awarded) and Lower Saxony (237MW across 24 contracts awarded). 

In southern Germany, eight contracts totalling 101MW went to sites in Bavaria, while no sites were awarded contracts in Baden-Württemberg.