Ireland’s first renewables auction

Clean energy developers have three days left to pre-qualify for the first procurement exercise staged by the Irish Renewable Electricity Support Scheme. Solar will compete with wind – on and offshore – and biomass projects.

The application deadline has been extended because of the public health crisis.

Image: Anna & Michal/Flickr

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With that tweet, Ireland’s state-owned electricity transmission operator, Eirgrid, sent a reminder to clean energy project developers aiming to participate in the Ress tender.

The program was launched on March 16 and the original deadline for the first round of Ress applications, April 2, was pushed back four weeks because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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The procurement round is intended to allocate enough solar, biomass and on and offshore wind project capacity to generate 1 TWh of clean energy. Successful developers will secure feed-in premiums to top-up the wholesale power price for contracts of 14-16.5 years, depending on project delivery dates.

A second round of the Ress program, intended to procure a further 3 TWh of clean power, is planned next year. A second auction next year will aim to generate 3 TWh and further rounds in 2023 and 2025 will pitch for 4 TWh and 2.5 TWh.

The Ress program, which started taking shape in September 2017, was approved by the Irish government in early December. At the time, the government estimated solar would account for around 10% of the renewables electricity contracted under the scheme.

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