WOW: Solar without subsidies now also in Germany!

As announced in my blog of January 21, 2019 "We will abolish the EEG in 2019", the implementation and project planning of large PV systems without subsidies have now been officially announced. A historical development - the third pillar besides EEG and own consumption, "PPA" is the key word. We`ll talk about that on February 26, 2019 in Berlin, more here .

While around 2 GW of wind energy with so-called PPA came onto the market across the EU last year and Baywa reported the realization of 175 MWp in Spain as PPA at the end of December 2018, it was still quiet in Germany for a long time. This is changing rapidly, especially today, EnBW and Energiekontor announced a PPA over 85 MWp .

On January 24, 2019, together with Baywa, Vattenfall and the Wattner Fund, we had officially announced that we would be able to realize up to 40 GW of new solar & wind hybrid power plants in the Lusatian area on the brown coal areas without subsidies: hope for the Reviere Handelsblatt

Essential prerequisites for these solar projects on an industrial scale are clear decisions by the federal states to convert coal / mining law into energy law in order to use these areas and create thousands of new jobs. In addition to the largely extremely positive reactions, many have had to digest it first. "What, without subsidies?" - so the demand. Yes, without subsidies - unlike fossil-nuclear producers!

Of course there will still be a lot to do, and it remains to be seen whether politicians will set the course for the GW-scale plants. According to the transmission system operators, the grids are no problem for this - contrary to Minister Altmaier`s constant indiscriminate slowing down of PV systems in the EEG.

Last week (as expected in the industry), EnBW announced the realization of 175 MWp in Weesow / Brandenburg without EEG funding for 2020; the B-plan procedure has already been completed. Front page contribution in the Handelsblatt

The Handelsblatt contribution also mentions another very exciting form of PPA: the sale of small portions of "pizza boxes" to solar power systems. In addition to electricity from the start up www . enyway . de . Its co-founder Heiko von Tschischwitz once founded a new chapter of electricity providers in Germany with a bright spot and is now predicting again and again that many new solar and wind turbines do not need funding. I am excited to see whether the new marketing approach from enyway will succeed - many more product ideas based on the lower costs of renewables will soon follow.

After the publication of the EnBW plans, the leading article in the Handelsblatt spoke on February 8, 2019 of the “wage of the energy transition” - Germany had acted correctly in the energy transition and, above all, solar energy despite the high costs, and the effort could now be harvested.

On the German website of pv-magazine, a comment on the article about the announcement by EnBW highlighted that there are already some solar parks without funding.

I know many other, also smaller, "PPA-Test" projects that will be realized in Germany in 2019 without funding. Of course, their cost-effectiveness is much more difficult than with large projects - there are simply no economies of scale. In addition to the prototype character, it is often areas that regional residents and authorities very well approve for solar use. But not in the EEG driven by ideology and slowing down of solar energy - which blocks many interesting projects. And this despite the fact that the prices for solar power with an "EEG protection" would bring even cheaper and also a wider variety of actors. However, it should also be said that in 2019 the first citizens` cooperatives will do PPA projects - crowdfunding (also a citizen participation!

Probably a development steeped in history.

The third pillar for solar power, which is emerging quickly here, once again reminds the urgently overdue further development of EEG & Co into a new energy law, which due to the still strong distortion of competition in favor of fossil nuclear energies also further incentives for the whole range of new renewable energies. Plants. An adequate minimum CO2 price would solve many problems, but it is also clear that this will not work overnight with the current government.

And so the subsidy-free solar power systems will not be able to replace the EEG overnight, but will clearly show that it is time to “abolish” the EEG. And to put it bluntly: In the last blog I didn`t mean the complete abolition of the EEG, but what our opponents get the most: the parliamentary remuneration, which is abolishing itself in the solar sector anyway. More on that in the next blog.

While PPAs are still in the early stages in Germany, the world`s largest PPA is reported from southern Europe .