BNetzA solar tenders 2026: supply is shrinking, award prices are falling

6 min read · Updat­ed on 22 Octo­ber 2026

Three ten­der rounds, one clear dou­ble trend: award val­ues for ground-mount­ed solar are falling from round to round, and the vol­ume of bids sub­mit­ted is col­laps­ing even faster. Because the Fed­er­al Net­work Agency (BNet­zA) sets the ten­der vol­ume in advance, this is not a demand effect but a sup­ply effect. A grow­ing share of projects sim­ply no longer reach­es the com­pet­i­tive range at these prices because of their cost struc­ture. And in the mid­dle of it all is agri­v­oltaics, which has just achieved its best share of awards so far, while the EEG 2027 is already rewrit­ing the rules for the next round.

Three rounds, one clear trend

The vol­ume-weight­ed award val­ue has fall­en in every round since Decem­ber 2025: from 5.00 to 4.94 and most recent­ly to 4.79 ct/kWh in July 2026. Over the same peri­od, over­sub­scrip­tion, the ratio of sub­mit­ted to ten­dered vol­ume, fell from around 125 % to 101 % and then to 48.5 %. The Fed­er­al Net­work Agency sets the ten­der vol­ume inde­pen­dent­ly of what hap­pens in the mar­ket; it is the fixed quan­ti­ty in this equa­tion. Over­sub­scrip­tion there­fore reflects not demand but sup­ply: how many projects devel­op­ers can bring to the ten­der in a com­pet­i­tive state at all. And in absolute terms this sup­ply is shrink­ing even more marked­ly than the ratio sug­gests: the vol­ume sub­mit­ted fell from 5,247 to 4,622 and then to 3,170 MW. Price and bid vol­ume are there­fore falling for the same rea­son: the award val­ue reflects the actu­al cost struc­ture of projects, and a grow­ing share can no longer get onto the cost curve at this lev­el and does not bid in the first place.

Indi­ca­tor	Dec 2025	Mar 2026	Jul 2026
Ten­der vol­ume	2,328 MW	2,295 MW	2,134.66 MW
Sub­mit­ted (bids)	5,247 MW (634)	4,622 MW (532)	3,170 MW (401)
Over­sub­scrip­tion	~125 %	~101 %	48.5 %
Award­ed (bids)	2,341 MW (262)	2,299 MW (268)	2,134.66 MW (261)
Exclu­sions	61 (9.6 %)	39 (7.3 %)	48 (11.97 %)
Award val­ue (aver­age)	5.00 ct/kWh	4.94 ct/kWh	4.79 ct/kWh
Price range	4.40–5.30 ct/kWh	3.99–5.10 ct/kWh	4.38–4.97 ct/kWh

The upper lim­it of the bids actu­al­ly award­ed is also falling: from 5.30 to 5.10 and then to 4.97 ct/kWh. The statu­to­ry max­i­mum val­ue, which is derived from the three pre­vi­ous rounds, is only lag­ging behind this devel­op­ment. It has long ceased to be what lim­its the mar­ket; the lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion does that.

Regional focus in July

Fed­er­al state	Awards	MW	Aver­age MW per award
Bavaria	75	429	5.72
Baden-Würt­tem­berg	41	266	6.49
Rhineland-Palati­nate	25	239	9.56
North Rhine-West­phalia	21	233	11.10
Low­er Sax­ony	28	225	8.04

Bavaria remains the leader by vol­ume, but with small projects (aver­age 5.72 MW); in North Rhine-West­phalia and Rhineland-Palati­nate the sites are on aver­age almost twice as large. Two mar­ket log­ics exist side by side.

Agrivoltaics: record share, and then?

Agri­v­oltaics does not have its own ten­der but runs as a “spe­cial solar instal­la­tion” with­in this first seg­ment, where it com­petes in a sub-seg­ment that receives pref­er­en­tial awards under Sec­tion 37d EEG 2023. Over the three rounds, a remark­able accel­er­a­tion can be seen:

Round	Awards	MW	Share of award­ed vol­ume
Dec 2025	30	204	8.7 %
Mar 2026	59	439	19.1 % (peak)
Jul 2026	no sep­a­rate fig­ures pub­lished	–	–

The share of spe­cial solar instal­la­tions in the award­ed vol­ume more than dou­bled from Decem­ber to March. For the July round, the Fed­er­al Net­work Agency has not yet pub­lished a sep­a­rate analy­sis; any­one who wants to know whether the trend con­tin­ues will have to wait for the next sta­tis­tics.

EEG 2027: no dedicated segment any more, but a new uniform bonus

On 29 July 2026, the fed­er­al cab­i­net adopt­ed the EEG amend­ment and the grid con­nec­tion pack­age. For agri­v­oltaics, this con­firms the course of the min­istry draft of 17 July: the pref­er­en­tial­ly award­ed sub-seg­ment under Sec­tion 37d EEG 2023 is abol­ished, and agri­v­oltaics will in future com­pete with con­ven­tion­al ground-mount­ed sys­tems in the shared first seg­ment. In its place comes a uni­form ele­va­tion bonus of +0.5 ct/kWh, regard­less of whether a sys­tem meets the high­ly ele­vat­ed cat­e­go­ry I (at least 2.10 m clear­ance, pass­able for farm machin­ery) or the ground-lev­el, ver­ti­cal­ly ori­ent­ed cat­e­go­ry II (at least 0.80 m) (Sec­tion 38a and Sec­tion 48(1b) EEG 2027).

Size class	Legal basis	Val­ue before bonus	+ bonus	Result
≤ 1 MW (exempt from ten­ders)	Sec­tion 48(1) EEG 2027	6.2 ct/kWh	+0.5 ct/kWh	6.7 ct/kWh
> 1 MW (sub­ject to ten­ders)	Sec­tion 38a in con­junc­tion with Sec­tion 37b EEG 2027	max. 5.9 ct/kWh (max­i­mum val­ue, 1st seg­ment)	+0.5 ct/kWh	max. 6.4 ct/kWh

Notably, the bonus is the same for cat­e­go­ry I and cat­e­go­ry II, even though high­ly ele­vat­ed cat­e­go­ry I sys­tems with a sup­port­ing struc­ture and clear­ance for farm machin­ery are notice­ably more expen­sive to build than ground-lev­el cat­e­go­ry II sys­tems. The explana­to­ry mem­o­ran­dum refers to “ori­en­ta­tion towards the most cost-effec­tive tech­nol­o­gy […] in order to avoid over-com­pen­sa­tion”; project design itself has to earn the dif­fer­ence in actu­al sub­struc­ture costs.

Two fur­ther changes feed direct­ly into project plan­ning: if proof of agri­cul­tur­al dual use is miss­ing, the applic­a­ble val­ue will in future only fall by 0.5 ct/kWh, and this can be cor­rect­ed retroac­tive­ly if the proof is sub­mit­ted lat­er. A stag­gered dead­line is also new: any­one con­nect­ing to the grid lat­er than 18 months after the award los­es 0.3 ct/kWh; after 24 months the award laps­es entire­ly (Sec­tion 54(1), Sec­tion 37e EEG 2027).

New and concrete: location-based steering in grid hot spots

The grid con­nec­tion pack­age adds an ele­ment that becomes direct­ly rel­e­vant for site selec­tion: in regions that fore­see­ably can­not absorb addi­tion­al wind or solar feed-in, com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments for cur­tail­ment will no longer apply, capped at a max­i­mum of 20 % of annu­al gen­er­a­tion (18 % in wind pri­or­i­ty areas) and lim­it­ed to six years. Because an award from 1 MW will in future be bound to the land par­cel named in the bid, an unfavourable site can no longer be cor­rect­ed after­wards. Grid com­pat­i­bil­i­ty thus becomes an assess­ment cri­te­ri­on before the bid is sub­mit­ted, not after­wards. The capped nature, how­ev­er, makes the risk cal­cu­la­ble rather than unlim­it­ed.

The par­lia­men­tary process in the Bun­destag and Bun­desrat is still ongo­ing; entry into force is still planned for 1 Jan­u­ary 2027, and changes to detailed rules are com­mon in the process. Ylek­tra already includes the grid sit­u­a­tion in the site analy­sis of ongo­ing projects and con­tin­ues to analyse the par­lia­men­tary delib­er­a­tions and the final ver­sion of the sup­port rates.

Conclusion

The real find­ing of this sum­mer is the new low of 4.79 ct/kWh that agri­v­oltaics has to com­pete with. For agri­v­oltaics, the log­ic shifts with the EEG 2027: no ded­i­cat­ed, pref­er­en­tial­ly award­ed seg­ment any more, but instead a mod­er­ate, uni­form bonus, and with loca­tion-based steer­ing in grid hot spots a new, read­i­ly cal­cu­la­ble risk fac­tor that should feed into site selec­tion before bid­ding, by 2027 at the lat­est.

FAQ

How large was the agrivoltaics share in the last tender rounds?

Spe­cial solar instal­la­tions reached a share of 8.7 % of the award­ed vol­ume in Decem­ber 2025 (30 awards, 204 MW) and a peak of 19.1 % in March 2026 (59 awards, 439 MW). The Fed­er­al Net­work Agency has not yet pub­lished sep­a­rate fig­ures for July 2026.

What changes for agrivoltaics with the EEG 2027?

The cab­i­net deci­sion of 29 July 2026 deletes the pref­er­en­tial­ly award­ed sub-seg­ment for spe­cial solar instal­la­tions under Sec­tion 37d EEG 2023. Agri­v­oltaics will in future com­pete with con­ven­tion­al ground-mount­ed sys­tems in the shared first seg­ment, but in return receives a uni­form ele­va­tion bonus of +0.5 ct/kWh (Sec­tion 38a and Sec­tion 48(1b) EEG 2027), equal­ly for sys­tems up to 1 MW and above.

What is the applicable value for agrivoltaics under the EEG 2027?

For sys­tems up to 1 MW: 6.2 ct/kWh plus 0.5 ct/kWh bonus = 6.7 ct/kWh (Sec­tion 48 EEG 2027). For sys­tems over 1 MW that must take part in ten­ders: a max­i­mum val­ue of 5.9 ct/kWh in the first seg­ment plus 0.5 ct/kWh bonus = a max­i­mum of 6.4 ct/kWh (Sec­tion 38a in con­junc­tion with Sec­tion 37b EEG 2027).

How do agrivoltaic systems currently take part in the tenders?

From 1 MW, they take part in the first seg­ment as “spe­cial solar instal­la­tions” and are han­dled there in a sep­a­rate, pref­er­en­tial­ly award­ed sub-seg­ment under Sec­tion 37d EEG 2023.

What is location-based steering in grid hot spots?

In regions that fore­see­ably can­not absorb addi­tion­al wind or solar feed-in, com­pen­sa­tion for cur­tail­ment will no longer apply, capped at a max­i­mum of 20 % of annu­al gen­er­a­tion (18 % in wind pri­or­i­ty areas) and lim­it­ed to six years. Because awards from 1 MW will in future be firm­ly tied to the named land par­cel, grid com­pat­i­bil­i­ty should be checked before the bid is sub­mit­ted.

When does the EEG 2027 enter into force?

Fol­low­ing the cab­i­net deci­sion of 29 July 2026, the par­lia­men­tary process in the Bun­destag and Bun­desrat is still pend­ing. The rules are to apply from 1 Jan­u­ary 2027; changes to detailed rules are pos­si­ble in the process.