Auctions

The Croatian Energy Market Operator (HROTE) has announced a much-anticipated, €257.2 million ($273.5 million) round of renewable energy auctions. It has allocated the biggest quota of 450 MW for solar projects and has set a deadline to award the subsidies by year’s end.

An international team of scientists has assessed different strategies for volume-based and fixed-amount subsidy auctions for large-scale wind and solar projects. They have found that higher subsidy levels in auctions lead to lower final prices.

The Chilean National Energy Commission (CNE) has issued bidding rules for electricity supplies for regulated customers. It will auction off a total of 5,400 GWh, divided into two blocks of 1,800 GWh and 3,600 GWh each.

The Portuguese government said in a new legal decree that it will adjust the prices, according to inflation, of winning bids from its record-breaking solar auctions in 2019 and 2020. It will also extend the period during which projects can sell electricity at spot market prices by 12 months.

Extreme volatility and high prices recorded on energy markets, coupled with inflation, and soaring interest rates are impacting long term power purchase agreements. Still there is a way to the success and signing of contracts.

The retirement of coal baseload capacity, some regulatory adjustments and high energy prices volatility could bode well for the deployment of batteries in Italy, and especially in Sicily. Problems, mostly related to the timing and the structure of the auction, remain, however. We spoke about it with Michele Scolaro, Aurora Energy Research Associate.

Solar developers only had limited success in Brazil’s latest energy auctions, with relatively higher prices for PV. Several analysts spoke to pv magazine about the results of the procurement exercises.

Ecuador’s latest procurement exercise will be open to solar, wind, hydropower and biomass projects.

The fourth auction held for systems with a generation capacity no larger than 1 MW saw solar secure 750 MW of projects to leave wind developers in the cold. Innogy took its first steps into Polish PV with 42 projects across three provinces.

Greece’s energy regulator has announced the results of the country’s latest round of tenders for renewable energy, which saw the incumbent utility offer the country’s lowest bid for a solar PV project.