Germany Awards 288 MW of Solar in Latest Rooftop Tender
Germany’s Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) awarded 288 megawatts of rooftop and noise-barrier solar capacity across 143 projects in its latest tender, results confirmed November 3. The round drew 177 bids totaling 347 megawatts, meaning roughly one-fifth of submitted capacity went unfunded even as prices held close to their lowest levels of the year.
Prices edge down despite steady demand
The volume-weighted average award price came in at €0.0967 per kilowatt-hour, just under the regulator’s €0.10/kWh ceiling and slightly below the €0.0972/kWh average from the previous round in July. Winning bids ranged between €0.085 and €0.10/kWh. The regulator excluded 34 bids totaling 58 megawatts from the round without disclosing the reasons, a standard feature of German tender rounds where bids can be disqualified for incomplete documentation or project-eligibility issues.
Bid volume actually rose slightly from July’s 296 megawatts, suggesting developer appetite for rooftop and noise-barrier solar remains steady even as award prices continue to edge lower — a pattern consistent with Germany’s broader solar auction history, where competition among bidders has pushed prices down gradually even as deployment volumes stay roughly flat round to round.
Where the capacity went
North Rhine-Westphalia took the largest share of the awarded capacity, with 38 projects totaling 66 megawatts. Hessen followed with 11 winning bids for 30 megawatts, Brandenburg with 14 bids for 28 megawatts, and Lower Saxony with 16 bids for 27 megawatts. The regional spread tracks roughly with where Germany has concentrated rooftop and commercial-scale solar development in recent tender rounds, rather than marking any sharp shift in geography.
One of several tracks for German solar
Rooftop and noise-barrier installations compete in a separate tender category from Germany’s ground-mounted solar auctions and from the solar-plus-storage tenders the Bundesnetzagentur runs alongside them. The agency’s most recent solar-plus-storage tender, held in September, awarded 480 megawatts at record-low prices, underscoring how storage-paired projects have increasingly undercut standalone solar on price even as rooftop-only tenders like this one maintain a higher cost floor tied to smaller individual project sizes. Germany has also been working through regulatory changes aimed at the broader distributed-solar market: new rules known as MiSpeL, approved in early October, let batteries mix solar and grid power at residential sites, a change aimed at making battery storage more economically viable for households and small commercial rooftop-solar operators of the kind that bid into tenders like this one.
The Bundesnetzagentur runs rooftop and noise-barrier solar tenders several times a year as part of Germany’s broader renewable-auction system, which sets both the volume of capacity released to the market and the price ceiling bidders compete under. The next round is expected in the coming months, continuing the gradual, incremental price declines that have characterized the category through 2026.
Sources
- Bundesnetzagentur (Germany’s Federal Network Agency), rooftop and noise-barrier solar tender results, November 3, 2026 — award volume, bid numbers, prices and regional breakdown.
- PV Magazine, “Germany awards 288 MW of solar in rooftop tender at average price of €0.0967/kWh,” November 3, 2026 — independent reporting and comparison with the July tender round.
Illustrative image. Photo: Dr. Chinchu C., CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — source
