PHOTON International The Photovoltaic Magazine

New guidelines for 100,000 Roofs Program issued

The revised guidelines for Germany's 100,000 Roofs Program were issued in the Bundesanzeiger, the federal register, on March 17 – about a month later than originally planned (see PI 3/2001, p. 14), since the Bundesrechnungshof, the federal court of auditors, had declared certain misgivings about the changes to the Ministry of Economics.

In the meantime, the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), the German bank for reconstruction, reduced approvals to almost nil. Although the Ministry of Economics did not order an official halt to the program, in the interest of investors as few applications as possible were granted, says KfW spokesman Klaus Becker. His justification – that the new guidelines improve the conditions – is partly true.

Beginning March 17, commercial applicants will be treated like private applicants. Both can receive a loan of 100 percent of the investment for PV systems up to 5 kW; this drops to 50 percent for larger installations. The upper loan limit per kW has been decreased from 13,500 DM ($6,380 USD) to 12,875 DM ($6,080 USD). So funding conditions for private investors actually worsen under the new guidelines.

By the end of February, the KfW had approved only 281 applications with a total capacity of less than 1 MW. At a conference in Staffelstein on March 14 (see PI 4/2001, p. 14), the KfW's Ilka Homburg said that the 7,500 applications still waiting to be processed should be granted within the next six weeks. Afterwards, the program will resume a regular turnaround time of two weeks per application.