The Federal Arbitration Panel of the German parliament (Bundestag) and the Upper House (Bundesrat) has reached an agreement in the dispute about the FiT cuts for solar power. According to this agreement, the decision to reduce the FiT-level retroactively as of 1 April and to cut the FiT rates on a monthly basis remains, however, the panel decided on changes in the classification of power ranges: A separate power range for medium-sized rooftop-installations between 10-40kW will receive 18.5 Eurocent/kWh in future and thus more than initially decided by the Bundestag. Solar installations between 10 – 1,000kW only receive subsidies for 90 percent of the produced energy.

Newly introduced to the renewable energy law will be an absolute limit of 52GW of total installed capacity. At this level, the target for total expansion is reached and there will be now further subsidies for new installations. Until then, the annual corridor for new installations between 2500 – 3500MW without further FiT cuts remains. Initially, the Bundestag wanted to reduce the corridor gradually.

As to solar parks, the compromise includes only slight changes to the law that already passed the parliament. The limitation to 10MW remains, while the radius for pooling several ground-mounted systems to one complete facility is reduced from 4km to 2km.   

Furthermore, in a separate note to the agreement the German government ensures to create a technology open incentive program with low interest credits at the KfW-Bank to support decentralized storage solutions, with federal funds starting on 1 January 2013, latest. Additionally, the federal research funds for renewable energy systems, application oriented PV-system solutions and production technologies shall be significantly raised.