Germany, a hot spot for solar farming

In the coming years, Vattenfall plans to commission around 500 megawatts of solar power and 300 megawatts of large batteries each year – exclusively in combination, and many times in the form of agri-PV, the technology that enables solar power production to be combined with agriculture for better land use. Already in the first half of 2025, five new large-scale solar farms will be completed.

“Today nothing is cheaper than solar, says Björn Piske, Head of Solar Development in Germany. “In Germany, we need all the electricity generation we can get; for electric cars, for industry transformation, for heating homes etcetera. Even in combination with battery energy storage solar is the cheapest form of renewable power.”

“When I started my career in the solar business 17 years ago, the main markets for solar power in Europe were Spain and Italy. Of course, these countries have more sun radiation than we do, and at that time, it only made sense to invest there. Today, the efficiency of solar panels is so much higher, which makes also investments in Germany viable, and without any subsidies,” he says.

The capacity of the projected solar farms vary, from about 50 MW up to 240 MW, but they are always planned as hybrid power farms, meaning that the solar panels are combined with battery storage.

“Hybrid power farms have a number of advantages. For example, grid capacity is almost always an issue and with batteries we can mitigate that and also provide a number of balancing and frequency services. Also, batteries help us shift the power in time. We want that because when the sun shines on our panels, it also shines on everyone else’s. So, the batteries enable us to spread the electricity produced over time to hours when it is best needed. Shifting the power a few hours is enough to make a big difference,” Piske says.