Significant oversubscription in the auction for solar installations that ended on 1 March 2026
Year of issue 2026
Date of issue 2026.05.12
The Bundesnetzagentur has today announced the results of the auction that closed for bids on 1 March 2026 for ground-mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) installations and solar installations on a structure that is neither a building nor a noise barrier.
“As with the previous round, the auction was significantly oversubscribed. Bids were received totalling more than twice the tender volume. The award values of the successful bids were again lower than in the previous round
,” said Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur.
Auction again considerably oversubscribed
The auction round that ended on 1 March 2026 was significantly oversubscribed. The auction was for a volume of 2,295 megawatts (MW). There were 532 bids with a total volume of 4,622 MW, of which 268 with a combined volume of 2,299 MW were successful. A total of 39 bids were excluded from the proceedings.
The award values of the successful bids in the pay-as-bid auction ranged from 3.99 cents per kilowatt hour (ct/kWh) to 5.10 ct/kWh. The average volume-weighted award value in this round was 4.94 ct/kWh, slightly below that of the previous round (5.00 ct/kWh).
The federal state with by far the most volume awarded was, as in previous rounds, Bavaria (693 MW, 106 winning bids), followed by Lower Saxony (340 MW, 33 winning bids) and Baden-Württemberg (333 MW, 45 winning bids).
Most successful bids went to projects that are planned alongside motorways and railway lines (123 winning bids for a total of 1,026 MW). The category with the second largest volume of winning bids was farmland or grassland in disadvantaged areas (73 winning bids for a total of 760 MW). The third largest volume, making up nearly 15% of the volume of the bids submitted and almost a fifth of the successful bids, went to “special solar installations” (59 winning bids for a total of 439 MW). This marked the respective peak and was a significant increase compared to the previous rounds. The “special solar installation” projects involve the use of land for both electricity generation and another purpose such as agriculture.
Further information
Further information about the auction is available on the Bundesnetzagentur’s website (in German) at: www.bundesnetzagentur.de/1091186.
The next auction for first-segment solar installations will close for bids on 1 July 2026.
