Source: Energy & Management Powernews, March 17, 2022
The BDEW considers a tripling of the annual PV addition necessary. For this purpose, 1% of the state areas and the roofs of public buildings should be made available.
Again, against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, the rapid and massive expansion of renewable energies is once again gaining significant importance for Germany's energy supply. The German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) considers photovoltaics (PV) to be one of the central pillars for this, along with wind energy. In the next few years, a massive expansion is needed, which has never been seen before at this pace, appeals the BDEW.
To ignite this turbo in PV, the association has analyzed the current challenges and obstacles to PV expansion and shows in its paper "30 proposals for a PV turbo", which political and regulatory changes are needed to trigger a PV boom now. Kerstin Andreae, Chairwoman of BDEW's Executive Board, said, "Photovoltaics is a central building block for a secure energy supply and offers highly variable and widely accepted application options with its diverse system forms."
The German government's target of 200,000 MW of installed PV capacity by 2030 is very ambitious, she said. According to BDEW calculations, it would require the annual addition of an average of 15,000 MW of installed capacity. "That dwarfs anything we've seen in terms of additions so far," Andreae said. In the past two years, PV additions hovered around 5,000 MW of capacity. "The German government must now remove existing obstacles as quickly as possible in order to ignite the PV turbo this year," BDEW demanded.
Detailed proposals
The targets from the coalition agreement should be anchored in the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) in a legally binding way and the tender volumes for ground-mounted and rooftop systems should be increased. Unrestricted legal support for plants below 1 MW should be made possible and additional tender volumes for innovation tenders should be created, such as agri-PV in combination with agricultural use or floating PV on bodies of water. The framework conditions for direct supply contracts with renewable electricity (Green PPA) should be improved and the remuneration rates should be increased.
- More suitable areas with binding planning horizons should be made available for PV open space plants, 1% of the country's area is the target. Approval procedures would have to be accelerated, through better staffing of the responsible authorities, the switch to digital processes or simplifications and standardizations in nature conservation or monument protection law. Participation opportunities for citizens and municipalities should ensure acceptance.
- For roof systems would have to apply nationwide uniform PV standards and roofs of public buildings be made mandatory. Prosuming and the conditions for tenant electricity should be simplified quickly. In addition, PV systems should be efficiently integrated into the grids.
The paper "30 Proposals for a PV Boom"is available for download as a PDF on the Internet by BDEW.
Author: Susanne Harmsen