Colombia’s renewables auction assigns 796 MW of solar at average price of $0.041/kWh

From pv magazine Latam

Colombia‘s Ministry of Mines and Energy has announced the results of the country's second auction for large scale renewable energy projects.

In the procurement exercise, the National Mining and Energy Planning Unit allocated 796 MW of large scale solar at an average price of COP155/kWh ($0.041).

The capacity comes from 11 projects, under development by French utility EDF, Chinese-Canadian manufacturer Canadian Solar, Spanish solar companies Solarpack and Genersol, Italy's Enel, U.K.-based TWSolar, and Colombian developers Empresas públicas de Medellín, Celsia, EPM, Urrá and Fotovoltaica Arrayanes.

Projects selected in the auction are entitled to a 15-year PPA and must come into operation by January 1, 2023.

The Colombian authorities allocated 2.2 GW of solar and wind power generation capacity in the country’s first renewable energy auction, which was finalized in October 2019. That exercise’s final average price was COP95/kWh ($0.025), and the highest bid reached only COP110 ($0.029).

Projects selected in that first auction were entitled to a 15-year PPA and must come into operation by January 1, 2022. Contracts are linked to the Colombian peso and updated based on a producer price index certified by Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics.

According to the latest figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency, Colombia had an operational installed PV capacity of around 107 MW at the end of 2020.