Since 2008 about 29,500 projects have been rewarded with subsidy allowing The Netherlands to develop its capacity in terms of renewable energy production. With the 2020 objectives getting closer, rounds of SDE+ have become larger and budget have been increased by 33% by the Government in order to reach the objectives – now reaching 12 billion euros to be allocated only for the year 2017.
Divided into two rounds which each have three phases, with a price per kWh increasing (from 0.090€/kWh to 0.125€/kWh), first round of 2017 subsidy have rewarded mainly solar PV (73%) & on-shore wind projects (20%), the rest (10%) being allocated to biomass, geothermal and hydro – largely rewarded in 2016 and previous years.
Zooming in into wind projects, 68 have been approved for the first round of 2017, totaling 643MW, for a total amount of 2,209 million euros. Breakdown is as follow:
- 0 – 2.5 megawatt: 25 projects (0.4 megawatt)
- 2.5 – 5 megawatt: 26 projects (102.7 megawatts)
- 5-10 megawatts: 2 projects (15.0 megawatts)
- 10-25 megawatt: 5 projects (79.5 megawatts)
- 25+ megawatt: 10 projects (446.0 megawatt)
This is significantly more than in the final subsidy round of 2016 where only 299.2MW of onshore wind projects were granted with subsidies – the rest being mainly allocated to solar PV projects & other technologies ones.
SDE+ second round of 2017 is now about to open with a €6 billion budget to be granted. The normal order in the bidding is wind, other renewable (heating) projects and finally solar. Our expectation for this round is:
Contrary to the last round the wind sector will get a large part of the budget as more large projects will opt for subsidy. Large wind energy projects and those between 200 MW and 500 MW should be ready for the bidding. Greensolver is expecting that around 1.1 GW with around €2.2 billion full capacity hours should be rewarded.
Other renewable technologies are more difficult to predict because they are quickly moving and less transparent markets. However, our guess is that about €850 million of the budget will be allocated to these technologies (235MW).
Initially, solar: last year all projects have been granted subsidy, leaving no projects that will bid again this round. Furthermore, there have been an enormous amount of small to medium solar projects that have been granted with subsidy. The expectation is that there will be less solar projects applying for subsidy but with a bigger capacity. In the meantime, the maximum amount a project can opt for has been reduced from €12,5/MW to €11.7/MW, meaning that feasibility needs to be better.
Concerning solar, what is to be noticed is the way of bidding chosen by most developers. Indeed, either they bid on the budget decreased from previous round or on the amount granted on average over previous round. For example, during first round of 2017, 70% of PV developers have bid between €11.0 and €11.7/MW. At Greensolver we expect that about 2.3GW of solar projects will apply, which could represent €2.9 billion. Nearly all or all projects should be granted with subsidy.
Greensolver whishes all developers the best of luck for this subsidy round and hope we can assist you on realizing them.