Japan’s 13th solar auction concludes with lowest bid of $0.066/kWh

Japan’s Green Investment Promotion Organization has released the final results of the latest auction for solar energy projects with power ratings above 250 kW.

The state-run agency said that PV projects with a combined capacity of 26.2 MW were selected in the procurement exercise. It was Japan’s thirteenth auction scheme for utility-scale solar. It was supposed to assign 225 MW of generating capacity. It was also the second such exercise to award either fixed feed-in tariffs or feed-in premium tariffs.

For the feed-in premiums, which will be granted to projects above 1 MW, the assigned capacity was 14.3 MW across 10 projects. The Japanese authorities originally planned to allocate 150 MW and agreed to review 11 projects, totaling 44.3 MW. The lowest bid offered in the auction was JPY 9.70 ($0.068)/kWh and the average, offered final price was JPY 9.81. The ceiling price was set at JPY 9.88/kWh.

The feed-in tariffs will be awarded to projects ranging in size from 250 kW to 1 MW. The authorities assigned 11.8 MW of capacity and the lowest bid was JPY 9.50/kWh. The final average price was JPY 9.77.

In the twelfth procurement exercis, which was finalized in June, the assigned PV capacity was 153.7 MW. The lowest bid came in at JPY 8.85/kWh. In the eleventh auction, held in March, the assigned PV power was 268.7 MW and the lowest bid was JPY 8.99/kWh. However, that was the last auction to award fixed tariffs.

In 2021, the Japanese government allocated 675 MW of PV capacity across three different auctions. In the previous auctions, it allocated 942 MW.