Auction

The Finnish Energy Agency is seeking proposals for annual electricity production totaling 1.4 TWh. Large-scale wind, solar, biomass and wave power projects will be entitled to participate in the auction.

Once a leading European PV market, the Czech Republic may resume development of large-scale renewables from 2021. Only wind, hydro and biomass projects, however, will be eligible, under a proposal from the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Only rooftop solar, of up to 1 MW, would be backed by a ‘feed-in premium’ scheme.

The country’s fourth long-term power auction, originally scheduled for November, will now be held on December 18. The preliminary call for the auction was made in March.

Originally scheduled to be held on Jan. 2, the auction has been delayed to an unspecified date in the third quarter of next year. Colombia’s national mining and energy planning unit UPME has also postponed the publication of final bidding terms at the request of interested parties.

Greece’s energy regulator has postponed the date of the country’s next solar PV and wind power tender. It will now take place on December 10. The Greek regulator has also provided further details on the regulations governing the new tenders.

Four PV projects totaling 170 MW were selected in the first of a series of RE auctions to be held this year. Overall, the Kazakh government is planning to assign 290 MW of solar and a total of 1 GW of renewable energy capacity.

The eastern European nation is being assisted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development with the creation of tender documentation for renewable energy auctions.

The additonal capacity is expected to come from the backlog of projects under Japan’s FIT mechanism and would raise cumulative installations to over 65 GW. In the period 2021-2027, however, the industry is expected to grow at a considerably lower pace, due to grid constraints, land availability and lower prices coming from auctions.

Among the pre-selected bidders are big European players, such as Enel, Total and Engie, and big solar manufacturers including JinkoSolar, Hanwha Q Cells and GCL. Further bids have come from big Japanese conglomerates, and companies from Spain, Germany, South Korea and Turkey. The first 350 MW phase of the large-scale solar park is expected to come online by the end of 2020.

Three seperate tenders will be held for the deployment of large-scale solar plants across three locations, chosen by the Turkish Government. Selected developers will not be required to open a module factory, as in the last tender, but will have to buy at least 60% of the necessary modules from Turkish panel makers. The new maximum price has been set slightly lower than the final price of the previous 1 GW solar auction, held in 2017.