German onshore wind auctions keep clearing lower. Why that strengthens the case for PPAs

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What the numbers say

Merchant and corporate PPA reference prices for German onshore wind currently sit around 55 EUR/MWh, with a pronounced north-south divide. Northern sites with higher full-load hours and southern sites closer to demand price differently, so a single national figure hides a spread of several EUR/MWh depending on location and contract shape.

Set that against an EEG award near 50.6 EUR/MWh and the picture has flipped. A project that wins a subsidy at the current award level locks in a guaranteed value a few EUR/MWh below where a comparable PPA can clear today. The subsidy still removes price risk, but the premium it once carried over the merchant route has gone.

The subsidy is also worth less than it used to be

Two structural changes compound the price gap. First, Germany has ended remuneration during negative price periods under the EEG, so the subsidised route no longer pays through the hours when wind output is highest and prices are lowest. Second, repeated oversubscription signals that permitted volume is outrunning auction supply, which keeps competitive pressure on award values and points to further declines rather than a rebound.

Taken together, the certainty the EEG offers is thinner than the headline value suggests, while the merchant alternative is pricing the same generation higher.

Why this matters for route-to-market decisions

None of this makes the subsidy wrong. For some balance sheets and some sites, guaranteed cash flow at 50 EUR/MWh remains the right call. The point is that the trade-off has moved. As award values fall and merchant PPA levels hold, the opportunity cost of taking the subsidy rises, and a structured PPA, or a hybrid that blends a baseload PPA with merchant upside, deserves a closer look than it did a year ago.

The decision turns on details that a national average cannot answer: the site's location and capture profile, the buyer landscape, the tenor on offer, and how negative-price exposure is shared in the contract. Those are exactly the variables that determine whether the PPA route beats the auction for a specific asset.

Synertics models these route-to-market choices across the markets we cover, pricing the EEG path against transactable PPA structures for the individual asset rather than the system in aggregate. To compare the current auction levels against PPA pricing for your own assets, try the PPA Tool at https://synertics.io/signup/ or reach out at info@synertics.io.