Turkey to issue 1 GW solar tender by the end of the summer

Turkey’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Berat Albayrak has announced that two tenders for new large-scale wind and solar projects will be held by the end of next summer.

According to a press release from the ministry, the announcement was made on the occasion of the Turkish Energy and Mining Forum in Istanbul.

Albayrak also said that the tender for solar, which is expected to assign another 1 GW of capacity, may also include the deployment of storage, without providing further details. As for the wind power tender, Albayrak said it will assign 1 GW of capacity.

The tenders will be held in the frame of the Renewable Energy Resources Area Project (YEKA), which was initially started for wind power and included solar since last year.

The vast majority of Turkey’s installed power is represented by unlicensed PV installations with a capacity of up to 1 MW. All of the plants included in this category are below 1 MW, or are segmented into 1 MW sub-units.

In the first solar auction held by the Turkish government last year, South Korea’s Hanwha Q Cells and local Turkish firm, Kalyon Enerji were awarded the contract to build 1 GW of solar in Konya, in the south-western edge of the Central Anatolian Plateau, at a price of $0.0699 per kWh.

The tender’s awarded contract included the construction of a 500 MW vertically integrated solar module factory, which Hanwha Q Cells and Kalyon Enerji inaugurated in December.