The maximum capacity for bids in this tender is currently subject to change. The Bundesnetzagentur announcement says that the changes under its SolarPaket 1 reforms – which increase the maximum tendered project capacity from 20MW to 50MW – still need approval from the European Commission. That approval is expected by June 30th at the latest, the announcement said.
The SolarPaket reforms were approved by the Bundestag – Germany’s national parliament – last month. As well as increased tender project capacity, they widen the net of available land and increase the tariff payable to commercial PV rooftop systems.
Projects on agricultural land and arable and grassland in “disadvantaged areas” are eligible in this tender. Bids for projects on agricultural land are valid up to the gross market-wide limit of 80GW.
Germany’s ground-mounted solar PV tenders have been extremely popular in recent months, with prices trending downwards. The last three auction rounds have all been oversubscribed; the September 2024 and February 2025 rounds, in particular, closed with bids for almost twice as much capacity as the Bundesnetzagentur tendered.
The most recent round, ending in April, was the lowest-priced auction since 2019 (4.66 cents/kWh on average), beating the record set by the previous iteration in February.
The Bundesnetzagentur said it will tender 9.9GW of PV capacity over the course of 2025, distributed between three bidding windows.
Beyond the tender schemes, the Agency said that Germany had surpassed 100GW of total installed PV capacity as of February 2025. At least 1GW of new capacity has been added every month for the last two years, according to Bundesnetzagentur data.