Germany adds 1.23 GW of solar in September as solar parks hit a 2026 low; 12.76 GW so far
Victoria Shinder2 min readGermany commissioned 1,226 MW of new photovoltaic capacity in September 2026, according to figures from the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) reported by pv magazine on 15 October. That is down from 1,644 MW in August but up from 920 MW in September 2025. Over the past twelve months, only February 2026 had a weaker month.
How the number is built. The agency counts commissioning and decommissioning entries submitted to the Market Master Data Register (Marktstammdatenregister) up to 13 October and adds a 15% adjustment for systems not yet registered, because operators have four weeks to report a new installation. The September figure is therefore an estimate that will move as late registrations come in.
Where the drop came from. Ground-mounted solar fell to 103 parks with 479 MW, the lowest monthly figure of the year, after 166 parks with 1,054 MW in August. Rooftop additions barely moved: 38,859 systems with 554 MW, against 539 MW in August, 814 MW in July and 672 MW in June. Plug-in "balcony" systems also slowed, to 28,647 units and 42 MW from 41,978 units and 61 MW. pv magazine notes that a rush to install rooftop systems before the planned changes to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) has not appeared; the government's draft would phase out feed-in tariffs for small PV systems after a transition period, with the changes due in early 2027.
The nine-month picture. From January to September, 660,445 systems with 12,762 MW were commissioned and 29,898 systems with 136 MW were taken out of service. The year-to-date total is slightly ahead of the 12.56 GW installed in the first nine months of 2025. At the end of September Germany had 6.34 million PV systems in operation with 130.7 GW of capacity.
A second count points the same way. The wholesaler EWS, working from the same register at the start of the week, counted 1,026 MW for September before late entries, against its own figures of 1,941 MW for July and 1,651 MW for August. It expects September to stay below the previous months but above September 2025 (1,024 MW in its count, including late registrations). EWS says the market is tracking close to earlier years in total while its structure shifts: systems above 750 kW account for about 57% of the capacity added this year, and new capacity in commercial systems and in residential rooftops up to 10 kW has fallen by more than 40% since 2024.
Source: pv magazine, citing Bundesnetzagentur and EWS — https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/10/15/germany-deploys-12-76-gw-of-solar-in-first-nine-months-of-2026/