Auction

The strong performance delivered by PV in Wednesday’s auction has demonstrated the solid market fundamentals of Brazil’s solar sector, and an improving competitive landscape. The winners of the auction included both major international players and local companies. Despite the auction’s surprising outcome, which was also driven by cheaper equipment and a stronger Real, PV technology will not be included in the upcoming A-6 auction.

The announcement was made by Prime Minister Youssef Chahed. The tender is set to be published on April 27.

The French energy giant will now build a solar PV power plant in Tauba, central Senegal, which will sell power at €0.0380 per kWh, while a second plant selling electricity at €0.0398 per kWh will be constructed in Kahone.

This year’s auction will be carried out by Mexico’s energy regulatory commission, CRE. Final results will be announced in early November.

In an interview with pv magazine, the president of the Peruvian Society of Renewable Energies, Juan Coronado, discusses the auction for solar and renewables, which the government is obliged to hold this year, and the different options large-solar has to resume its development in the Andean country. According to him, when the obstacles that are currently impeding private PPAs are eliminated, utility-scale PV projects could be conceived outside of the auction mechanism.

In an interview with pv magazine, head of the Brazilian government-run energy agency EPE, Luiz Augusto Barroso explains how the newly-implemented mechanism for power auctions was conceived for ensuring a more market-oriented approach and increasing competition. Barroso adds that the upcoming A-4 auction, which includes solar, may have a slightly bigger outcome than the auction held in December, and that the inclusion of solar in the A-6 auction, which is expected to be held in the second half of this year, is being considered.

For the A-4 April auction, the Brazilian regulator ANEEL has already pre-qualified solar projects with a combined capacity of 20 GW. The maximum price for wind projects has been set at around $79/MWh.

Price drop continued in the first round of the 2018 tender series. The final average price of solar bids was €0.0433/kWh, a value which is quite below that of the tenders for wind power.

Bids for solar PV ground-mounted projects and wind farms on land can be submitted to the Federal Network Agency by April 3. Overall, the German government will allocate around 200 MW of capacity in the tender.

Negotiators of the three German parties have agreed on a common preliminary paper. They also agreed on additional tenders for large-scale solar and wind power projects, with a volume of 4 GW in the years 2019 and 2020.