Navigating Germany's Netzpaket: a practical guide for solar asset owners

For years, solar asset owners in Germany operated in a relatively predictable world: generate power, feed it in, collect your tariff, under the Renewable Energy Act (EEG). That model is being systematically dismantled and the window to adapt is narrowing.

Solar revenue models change, and might not change back

In early 2025, Germany adopted the Solarspitzengesetz (Solar Peak Act) as part of its broader Netzpaket reform package aimed at adapting grid and market rules to rising renewable penetration. The law amends Section 51 of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), fundamentally changing how and when solar plants are remunerated.

The core shift: feed-in tariffs for new PV systems are now suspended during any 15-minute interval when spot market prices turn negative. There is no compensation for those hours unless a smart meter is installed, in which case lost intervals are only recovered at the very end of the 20-year subsidy period.

Alongside this, Germany's network regulator (Bundesnetzagentur) moved to phase out "avoided network tariffs", the remuneration paid to decentralised generators for feeding into the grid locally. These will be reduced by 25% per year starting January 2026, disappearing entirely by 2029.

And there's an operational constraint too: new PV installations under 100 kWp that lack remote controllability are capped at 60% active power output by default. Grid operators also might hold extended rights to curtail PV systems during grid stress events, with no obligation to compensate for lost production.

Taken together, this is more than a regulatory update. It is a structural re-pricing of solar assets in Germany.

The financial exposure is larger than most portfolios have modelled

The scale of the problem becomes clear when you look at market data. Germany recorded 1100 hours of negative electricity prices in 2025, a significant increase compared to prior years. That number is not going down. As solar and wind capacity continues to grow, midday and weekend oversupply events will become more frequent, not less.

For an IPP with 50–100 MW of solar capacity selling electricity at spot market prices (without price protection), the revenue impact is material:

• Zero tariff during negative price windows, even if your panels are producing at full capacity
• Curtailment losses when grid operators intervene, losses that are increasingly uncompensated
• Eroded capture rates: the ratio of what you actually earn versus the average market price is declining as the market price profile becomes increasingly unfavorable for solar-heavy production periods

Most project finance models and PPA structures were not stress-tested against these dynamics. Portfolio owners who have not revisited their revenue assumptions are likely sitting on underperforming assets without knowing it.

Why static monitoring is no longer enough

The traditional asset management approach — periodic reports, monthly kWh reconciliations, reactive maintenance — was designed for a stable regulatory and market environment. That environment no longer exists.

Consider what an asset owner actually needs to manage today:

• Real-time visibility into when curtailment is occurring versus when it is due to underperformance
• Understanding of curtailment-adjusted yield: distinguishing between lost energy that was unavoidable (grid-driven) and lost energy that signals a technical problem
• Day-ahead price awareness integrated into operational decisions: knowing tomorrow's price shape should influence whether you charge a co-located battery tonight or discharge it at noon
• Capture rate tracking: not just how much energy you produced, but how much revenue per MWh you actually captured relative to the market average

Without these inputs, portfolio decisions are made in the dark. Owners can neither accurately benchmark performance, challenge O&M contractors, nor make informed investment decisions about BESS retrofits or grid connection upgrades.

The case for co-located storage has fundamentally shifted

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) were previously justified primarily for grid services revenues or merchant price arbitrage. The Netzpaket era changes that calculation.

A co-located battery now serves a defensive financial function: absorbing solar production that would otherwise be injected during a negative price window, or curtailed by the grid operator, and shifting that energy to a more valuable delivery window. In markets with predictable midday price dips (which Germany is increasingly developing), even a modest 1–2-hour shift in production can materially improve capture rates.

But storage alone is not sufficient without intelligence on top of it. A battery that charges and discharges on a fixed schedule or simple self-consumption logic will systematically miss the best arbitrage windows.

Effective BESS operation in the post-Netzpaket environment requires:

1. Day-ahead price forecasting to identify when it is worth storing versus injecting
2. Production forecasting to anticipate solar output and plan battery state-of-charge accordingly
3. EMS integration that can act on forecasts dynamically, not just follow rules
4. Ongoing State of Health monitoring to ensure battery capacity assumptions used in financial models remain accurate as the asset ages

What smart asset owners are already doing to tackle regulatory changes

Leading IPPs and independent asset managers are re-building their monitoring and analytics stack around three priorities:

1. Curtailment quantification, not just curtailment detection

It is not enough to know curtailment happened. The critical question is: what was the financial value of the lost production at the market price at that moment? This requires reconciling metered output with modelled potential yield and market price data — at 15-minute resolution.

2. Portfolio-level financial dashboards

Tracking performance per asset is necessary but not sufficient. Portfolio-level visibility, aggregating curtailment losses, capture rates, and negative price exposure, is what enables prioritisation of interventions and accurate reporting to investors.

3. Integrated hybrid asset management

PV and BESS can no longer be managed as separate systems. Monitoring, optimisation, and analytics need to treat the co-located asset as a single entity with a unified revenue objective. Systems that still separate solar APM from BESS monitoring will increasingly produce misleading performance pictures.

The bottom line

Germany's Netzpaket and Solar Peak Act are not temporary headwinds. They reflect a permanent shift in how the grid and the market will price solar generation going forward. For IPP asset owners, the cost of inaction compounds every quarter: uncaptured losses in negative price windows, undetected curtailment, degrading BESS performance, and financing teams working from stale revenue assumptions.

The regulatory framework is now designed to reward active, intelligent participation in the market, and penalise passive injection. The question is not whether to adapt, but how quickly you can build the operational capability to do so.

At 3E SynaptiQ, we work with IPPs and asset owners to build exactly this kind of visibility across hybrid portfolios. If you're evaluating how the Netzpaket affects your assets, we're happy to walk through what good looks like for your specific portfolio setup.

References

PV Magazine. (2025, February 16). Germany introduces new rules for solar remuneration during negative prices.

Bundesnetzagentur. (2025, April 22). Bundesnetzagentur proposes to lower costs for electricity grid.

Enjoyelec. (2025, April 1). Solar Peak Act: Curbing Negative Prices.

Xpert Digital. (2025, March 9). The new Solarspitzen Act 2025 - Come on the feed-in tariff.

Solax Power. (2025, February 12). Germany's Solar Peak Act: Seizing the Opportunity for a Sustainable and Profitable Renewable Energy Future.