Germany on track for more than 11 GW annual PV capacity expansion

In April, 67,636 newly commissioned photovoltaic systems with a total capacity of 882.6 megawatts (MW) were reported to the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur, BNetzA). 322 plants with 1.5 MW went off the grid. The net addition in April thus amounts to 881.1 MW. Moreover, subsequent corrections resulted in a change for the March figure from 943.7 to 1,067.4 MW. This is the first time since June 2012 that more than one gigawatt (GW) of capacity was newly installed in one month.
In the first four months of the current year, 3.71 GW have now been statistically recorded. Extrapolated for the year as a whole, this would correspond to 11.14 GW. The data up to and including March had still shown 10.6 GW. The cumulative total installed capacity in Germany currently amounts to 71.26 GW; at the current trend, 78.7 GW would be reached by the end of the year. For the time being, this would also be within the target for the expansion path set by the German government, which envisages a total capacity of 88 GW for 2026. In the following years, however, the pace of expansion would have to be accelerated significantly.
Almost all of the new capacity commissioned in April - 824.5 MW or 93.4 percent – was built with support from the country’s Renewable Energy Law (EEG), of which 308.1 MW (34.9 percent of total new capacity) was built through tenders. 58.2 MW (6.6 percent) was built without EEG support.
© PHOTON