Germany Installed 375 MW New PV In January 2020

• Germany has officially reported new solar PV capacity additions in January 2020 as 374.69 MW
• Most of this capacity, at 309 MW, was added by systems deployed outside the tender scheme
• At the end of January 2020, country's cumulative installed solar PV capacity was few GWs shy of the now redundant 52 GW subsidy cap, at 49.55 GW

Germany started the year 2020 by installing 374.69 MW of new solar PV capacity in the month of January, according to the country's Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). The latest numbers from the agency show 309 MW of this capacity came from systems deployed outside the country's tender scheme.

The January 2020 additions are significantly down from the whopping 551.8 MW reported for January 2019, and higher than the 339.9 MW reported by the agency for December 2019. Overall, the year 2019 saw the country compared to the year before install close to 1 GW of more solar with 3.94 GW, which Bundesnetzagentur has now adjusted slightly down to 3.86 GW (see German PV Market Grows To 3.94 GW In 2019).

The aggregate installed solar power capacity of Germany at the end of January 2020 reached 49.55 GW. While the government agreed on removing the 52 GW cap on FITs for solar PV installation, it was not included in the Climate Protection Act 2030 approved in December last year; internal discussions within the government coalition over a new construction guideline for wind power for which solar was held hostage have delayed the removal of the 52 GW cap so far  (see Germany Approves Climate Protection Act 2030).

According to Fraunhofer ISE, in February 2020 renewables accounted for 61.2% of all power supply in the country supplying 27.63 TWh to the total of 45.12 TWh. Wind dominated Fraunhofer ISE's Energy Chart of the month with 45.8% or 20.80 TWh supplied to the grid, while solar's share was 1.86 TWh or 4.2%.