Turkey’s 1 GW Konya solar PV tender concludes at $0.0699 per kWh

South Korea’s Hanwha Q Cells and local Turkish firm Kalyon Enerji have won the Konya tender, offering to sell the generated electricity at a feed-in tariff of $0.0699 per kWh.

Turkey’s energy minister Berat Albayrak said recently that the plant “will have a 15-year purchase guarantee without any currency risk.”

Ates Ugurel, founder of Turkey’s Solar Energy Society Solarbaba, told pv magazine that the $0.0699 per kWh tariff is “not a bad figure, considering that Hanwha Q Cells will make a quite big investment in Turkey.” However, he added, “it was not the price that was important to me but the name of the international investor. Hanwha Q Cells was a good candidate!”

Last week, pv magazine reported that there were four bidders for the 1 GW plant in Konya. Furthermore, on Friday we reported that Turkey will launch a tender for 1 GW of solar PV capacity in mid-summer.

The latter was confirmed by the Turkish energy minister in a recent presentation at a U.S. conference. The minister did not say whether the new tender will also be accompanied by rules for local manufacturing.

Konya tender details
Commenting on the Konya tender specifically, the Turkish Solar Energy Society Günder said: “As a result of this competition, the price quotation for the 19th round was below the psychological limit of 7 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour at 6.99 cents. First of all, I would like to point out that the highest proportion of foreign partnerships among the bidders was the joint venture Kalyon – Hanhwa Q Cells under a 50-50% partnership.

“Therefore, Turkey benefits from the highest entry of foreign capital in this 1,3 billion USD investment. This is good news for Turkey. Our 1 GW domestic solar power plant, which will be operating within 36 months at the latest and will have a domestic 500 MW factory that will be operational within 21 months at the latest.”