Germany deploys 746 MW of solar, 143 MW of onshore wind in Feb

March 23 (Renewables Now) - Germany added 745.9 MW of fresh solar capacity to its grid in February and put 142.8 MW of onshore wind parks into operation, according to data published by the Federal Network Agency this week.

Overall, Germany's solar capacity grew by 1.6 GW in the first two months of the year as the figure for the new installations in January was revised to 873.7 MW from the initial estimate of 780 MW.

The data shows the subsidy-free solar plants that went online in February were 151.6 MW with 141.7 MW of it being attributable to ground-mounted installations. This by far exceeds the level from January when the installations set up without a subsidy under the EEG scheme totalled only 34.9 MW and 25.3 MW of this capacity were rooftop systems.

The ground-mounted solar plants that were built with an award from the tenders had a combined capacity of 105.3 MW in February, while new subsidised rooftop solar installations totalled 8.4 MW.

With 142.8 MW of net new additions, the expansion of onshore wind recovered in February from the low in the previous month but it is still far behind the targeted rate. One of the major hurdles to the acceleration is the approval process for new projects. Germany will tender 12.84 GW of onshore wind this year and in order to allocate the entire capacity, projects of at least 10 GW in total must be approved by the end of the year, according to industry association BWE. In the first two months of the year, permits were granted for the installation of 122 turbines with a combined capacity of 696.3 MW, based on the data from the Federal Network Agency.

Net new additions in MW	Solar	Onshore wind	Offshore wind
January	873.7	62.5	38.1
February	745.9	142.8	38.1
Total	1,619.6	205.3	76.2

As of end-February, Germany had 69.06 GW of solar, 58.25 GW of onshore wind and 8.2 GW of offshore wind in operation.