Turkey to hold 1 GW solar tender between March 8-12

Turkey's Ministry of Energy has announced the 1 GW solar tender it announced in July of last year will be held over a five-day period between March 8-12, 2021.

In a document published in the country's official journal, the Turkish government specified that it set a ceiling price of TRY0.35 ($0.047)/kWh for the procurement exercise and that winners will receive a 15-year power purchase guarantee. “Although the ceiling price was increased, the industry is worried about the value loss of the Turkish Lira and looking for a new more realistic price escalation calculation method,” the CEO of German company KRC Consulting, Hakki Karacaoglan, told pv magazine.

When the tender was announced, the Turkish government said the ceiling price would have been TRY0.3/kWh.

All projects must use locally produced modules and be located in 36 cities, and across 74 grid connection points. The following cities have been allocated projects under the tender: Adıyaman, Ağrı, Aksaray, Ankara, Antalya, Batman, Bayburt, Bilecik, Bingöl, Bitlis, Burdur, Bursa, Çankırı, Çorum, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, Erzurum, Eskişehir, Gaziantep, Hakkari, Iğdır, Kahramanmaraş, Kars, Kırşehir, Kilis, Malatya, Mardin, Mersin, Muş, Nevşehir, Osmaniye, Siirt, Şırnak, Uşak, Van and Yozgat. The selected facilities will have to range in size from 10 to 20 MW.

Karacaoglan said in July that, considering that locally-manufactured modules must be used and that they are around 30% more expensive than those produced elsewhere, project developers and participating parties will have difficulties in defining the right pricing. The auction will be in Turkish lira and, as a result, fundraising will have to be in Turkish lira. Due to the high inflation rate financing costs will be higher than if the auction was in euros or U.S. dollars.

The Yeka tender was originally postponed in January 2019 and was initially intended at selecting larger PV projects with a power range between 10 and 50 MW.