Auction

The procurement round secured an average solar power price of €96.49/MWh from arrays with a generation capacity of 100-500 kW, a small fall from the €97.48 posted in the previous exercise. Only 150 MW of generation capacity was allocated in the 300 MW tender.

Electricity generated by the facility will be sold at $0.08/kWh to national utility Sonabel. Burkina Faso recently adopted a solar-oriented energy policy.

The postal operator, which is present in 12,000 locations nationwide, wants PV facilities to power its operations. Bidders have until February 20 to deliver on a call for expressions of interest and pre-qualify for the tender.

The project is part of the 1 GW solar program developed by the government with the support of the Asian Development Bank. The solar park will be in the Surkhandarya province, in the far southeast of the country.

The Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy has started to pre-qualify developers for the first phase of the Noor PV II solar project.

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s second-largest utility, Elektroprivreda Republike Srpske (ERS), is planning the $75.7 million project. The region’s first solar park will be built near Trebinje, in Republika Srpska.

Only one 5 MW solar project was selected in the 500 MW auction, while wind project developers secured the remaining 495 MW. Final price for the selected solar park was €60/MWh.

Only 39.8 MW of PV projects were allocated in the fifth round of Japan’s procurement program for large-scale solar. The lowest price offered was ¥10.99/kWh ($0.10) and the highest ¥13.0, for an average price of ¥12.57.

The country saw the addition of 3.975 GW of new solar installations last year. Most of this capacity comes from solar projects selected by the Spanish government in the renewable energy auction held in July 2017.

The government has decided to implement a proper independent power producer development plan for large scale PV, with the help of the World Bank.