Energy Laws: Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs Gets More Specific

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The federal government intends to get serious about some of the already planned changes to the energy transition. Details about the now planned amendments to the Renewable Energy Sources Act and the intended procedures for grid connections became known on Friday afternoon from circles of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs. This would change important parameters of the energy transition – primarily to the disadvantage of smaller producers of electricity from photovoltaics.

Direct marketing is to replace feed-in tariffs

It is about “smarter” renewables, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The further expansion is intended to become 20 percent cheaper from the state's perspective – at least. What had already been indicated over the past weeks and months is now being formulated more concretely: The federal government sees no further need for subsidies for private PV systems, as these would pay for themselves relatively quickly even without subsidies, with a high proportion of self-consumption.

The fixed feed-in tariff is therefore now to permanently give way to direct marketing, in which the wholesale electricity price essentially represents the remuneration for fed-in electricity. How this will work in detail for smaller systems in the future has not yet been fully elaborated, even within Katherina Reiche's (CDU) ministry. However, it is clear: rooftop PV is considered too expensive overall by the Minister of Economic Affairs – larger ground-mounted systems, such as those on fields, are to be the way forward instead.

Home PV systems: Self-consumption should drive away the midday slump

A uniform feed-in tariff is to apply to small and medium-sized photovoltaic systems in the future, according to the BMWE. The official goal of the operation: grid compatibility. Small systems will have to throttle their feed-in capacity to a maximum of 50 percent at midday in the future. The Ministry of Economic Affairs primarily wants to incentivize the use of storage systems – whether for self-consumption or delayed feed-in. The BMWE does not yet explain to what extent such decentralized storage capacities are actually more sensible and grid-compatible than larger storage capacities at nodes.

Grid connections are to be prioritized

One of the most significant changes, in addition to all types of battery storage and generation systems, also affects data centers: The entire procedure for grid connections is to be revised. Instead of the previous first-come, first-served principle, the energy, and economics ministry wants to rely on “maturity levels,” i.e., the actual project planning status. Reservation fees are also to play a role in the future.

What could also make many smaller projects more positive: Operators will have to adhere to specific feedback deadlines in the future and provide more transparency about available capacities, reservations, and releases. In addition, operators will be able to assign higher and lower priorities to projects based on predefined criteria. However, the rules here are not to be left to the individual local distribution system operator, but are to come from the transmission system operators. They are to keep an eye on supra-regional problems and dispatch measures.

Formal capacity shortage should prevent compensation

The dispatching of capacities in partial grids is apparently one of the main adversaries for the BMWE management level: Currently, according to the ministry, unnecessary compensation payments are due for systems in throttled areas, while at the same time reserve capacity is being paid for. Exactly that is to change. One of the further ideas of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy is therefore the so-called “redispatch reservation”: Operators of distribution grids will be allowed to mark sections of their grids as too weak (“capacity-limited”) in the future. This is not intended to prohibit the expansion of renewable energies – but if generation systems are then throttled, this should no longer result in any compensation payments in the future. In addition, the BMWE wants to charge regionally differentiated construction cost contributions in the future – the Federal Network Agency is to be responsible for this.

Neither the concrete legal texts for a “Renewable Energy Sources Act 2027” nor for the reforms of grid connections have been presented yet. Intensive debate with parts of the opposition is to be expected in the parliamentary process in the Bundestag.

(nen)