Energy & utilities · Germany · Solar / photovoltaic

Germany zeroed solar feed-in pay during negative-price hours — developers lose the sunniest 457 hours of the year.

On 25 February 2025, Germany's Solarspitzengesetz (Solar Peak Act, an amendment to the Energiewirtschaftsgesetz — the country's energy industry law) came into force. For every new photovoltaic plant, the feed-in tariff — the fixed price the grid operator pays for power pushed into the public network — is now zero whenever the wholesale electricity price on the EPEX SPOT day-ahead market (Europe's main exchange for next-day power) turns negative. In 2024 there were 457 such hours, almost all of them at spring and summer midday. Project pay-back maths is upside down.

01The pain

"In the sunny months, in negative-price hours (400+ per year), you get no compensation. Is an installation that large still worth it?" — a German solar operator on the Photovoltaikforum, 13 March 2026.¹ Germany's Solarspitzengesetz (the Solar Peak Act) came into force on 25 February 2025. For every new photovoltaic plant, the feed-in tariff (the fixed price the grid operator pays for exported power) is now zero whenever the wholesale price on the EPEX SPOT day-ahead market turns negative.²

In 2024 there were 457 such hours, almost all at summer midday.² The law also caps feed-in at 60% of capacity for new 7–25 kilowatt-peak plants without an iMSys (Germany's smart meter and remote-control box); plants above 25 kWp must be remote-controllable from day one; plants above 100 kWp are shut off during the bad hours by their Direktvermarkter (the licensed wholesale-market trader), with no compensation.³ Grant Thornton estimates each project loses about €2,660 over twenty years at the 2024 hour count; most forecasters expect that number to climb.⁴

The 20-year EEG (Renewable Energy Act) tariff window is stretched to make up the lost hours, but a deferral two decades out does not refinance the loan that paid for the panels last spring. EPCs (engineering-procurement-construction firms that build the plant for the owner) now quote two prices: with battery, and without.

457 hours of zero feed-in pay in 2024, almost all at midday.

"A deferral two decades out does not refinance the loan that paid for the panels last spring." — Germany · solar EPC project-finance reality · 2026

02Who solves this today

Five German-market vendors that publicly market themselves as solving exactly the gap the Solarspitzengesetz opens — home and commercial battery storage with EPEX-aware control, dynamic-tariff supply, and Direktvermarkter (licensed wholesale-market trader) services for plants above 100 kWp. Each homepage was checked live on the date of writing. The list is intentionally narrow.

sonnen

Allgäu-based home-battery maker. Homepage markets the sonnenBatterie ("up to 80% of your energy needs from your own roof"), the sonnenVPP virtual power plant, the smart-energy-system energy manager and the sonnenApp — the exact stack that lets a 7–25 kWp owner soak up midday production behind the meter instead of feeding into a zero-price grid.

sonnen.de

1KOMMA5°

Hamburg-based rooftop-PV, battery, heat-pump and wallbox installer. Homepage features Heartbeat AI (a household energy manager) and Dynamic Pulse (a dynamic-price electricity tariff) — the pairing that schedules consumption around EPEX SPOT prices and curtails feed-in when the price turns negative.

1komma5.com

Enpal

Berlin-based residential solar and battery operator. Homepage markets Enpal.One+ as an "energy operating system" combining photovoltaics, heat pump and a dynamic 19-cent/kWh tariff with an in-house energy manager — designed to push self-consumption up and feed-in down on the bad-price hours.

enpal.de

Next Kraftwerke

Cologne-based virtual-power-plant operator and Direktvermarkter. Homepage advertises Direktvermarktung (selling a plant's output on the wholesale market), Fahrplanbetrieb (schedule operation) and Redispatch 2.0 for solar, biogas, wind and battery assets — the exact licensed-trader function that now has to execute the >100 kWp shut-off during negative-price hours.

next-kraftwerke.de

Tibber

Pan-European dynamic-tariff electricity supplier (Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway). Homepage markets EPEX-priced electricity, the Pulse real-time consumption meter, Smart Charging for EVs and "Überschussladen" (surplus-PV charging) inside one app — letting a household chase the negative-price hours instead of bleeding revenue to them.

tibber.com/de

Adjacent vendors were considered. Energy2market / e2m (e2m.energy), a major German Direktvermarkter for >100 kWp plants, was not catalog-side verifiable at the date of writing — the homepage timed out from the catalogue WebFetch. Re-check planned; not listed until a clean 200 fetch lands. SMA Solar Technology (sma.de) and Fronius (fronius.com) make smart inverters that participate in the same stack but are component vendors rather than end-customer solution providers and so are excluded from this list. EPEX SPOT, the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency) and the Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft (BSW-Solar) are referenced in section 01 as the wholesale exchange, the energy regulator and the industry trade body respectively, not third-party solution providers.

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Operators discussing this

These are real German solar operators talking about this pain in their own words on the Photovoltaikforum. They are the reason this page exists.

«Pauschal max. 60% der kWp-Leistung darf eingespeist werden. Smart Meter muss installiert werden und dann wird die Anlage a) bei Bedarf abgeriegelt, dass sie nicht mehr einspeist und b) bekommt man in den sonnigen Monaten, bei Negativpreisstunden (400+ pro Jahr) keine Vergütung mehr. Habe ich das richtig verstanden? Lohnt sich dann so eine große Anlage, wie wir sie geplant haben, überhaupt noch?»

"A flat maximum of 60% of the kWp output may be fed in. A smart meter has to be installed and then the plant a) gets curtailed on demand so it can no longer feed in, and b) during the sunny months, in negative-price hours (400+ per year), you get no compensation any more. Have I understood that correctly? Is an installation that large, the way we planned it, even worth it?"

22 kWp in 2026 installiert, Solarspitzengesetz, lohnt sich die Anlage trotzdem? · Photovoltaikforum — 3 distinct German solar operators (CheoRatharsair, Nils_71636, Wacker — all flagged Betreiber/operator in their forum profile) discussing Solarspitzengesetz pay-back math in one thread, opened 13 March 2026.
«Ich möchte die zweite Anlage mit 6,1 KWP mit zusätzlichen Modulen (ca. 5 KWP) erweitern. Wäre noch innerhalb der 12 Monatsfrist. Greift dann das Solarspitzengesetz? Muss ich auf 60 Prozent begrenzen? Kann mir jemand die Berechnung erläutern?»

"I want to expand the second plant of 6.1 kWp with extra modules (about 5 kWp). It would still be inside the 12-month window. Does the Solarspitzengesetz then bite? Do I have to cap at 60 percent? Can anyone walk me through the maths?"

Erweiterung PV Anlage - Auswirkung Solarspitzengesetz · Photovoltaikforum — operator-vs-operator help thread on Solarspitzengesetz compliance maths; opened 12 November 2025, paired with the March 2026 thread above this gives a multi-month arc Nov 2025 → Mar 2026.