strike price

Some 66 solar projects secured 15-year contracts-for-difference (CfDs) in a procurement exercise hailed a success despite undershooting its capacity targets.

A conference about the UK’s electricity market showed organizations are considering the future of the country’s energy sector and how to achieve a net zero economy.

With solar readmitted to the process for subsidizing new renewable energy generation capacity, the government says it is “hitting the accelerator” on clean power as it aims for a fully decarbonized electricity system by 2035.

French clean power company Neoen, part of the Paris-headquartered Impala conglomerate, is constructing three Irish solar plants with a total generation capacity of 58 MWp and has secured an agreement from Bord Gáis Energy to buy the electricity they will generate.

Competitive bidding for onshore solar and wind will establish a clean-power strike price acceptable to successful developers under the contracts-for-difference approach. The incentive scheme is also applicable to biogas, biomass, landfill gas, hydropower, concentrated solar power, and geothermal plants.

Trade organization Solar Energy UK has called for the government to mandate that solar target in a co-ordinated rallying cry issued with two peers. One of them, the Nuclear Industry Association, is a membership body sure to raise hackles in some quarters of the energy transition movement.

The €400 million, three-year scheme will guarantee price stability for developers while limiting costs to the Danish treasury and applies to on and offshore wind, wave power and hydro, as well as solar.

The success of unsubsidized clean power facilities in the country – whether driven by corporate power purchase agreements or selling direct to the wholesale electricity market – has prompted the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ponder whether contracts-for-difference payments will be fit for purpose in the years ahead.

Analyst Cornwall Insight said the figure, drawn from its Renewable Pipeline tracker, related only to the proportion of the nation’s 13 GW solar pipeline which had already applied for or secured planning permission.

The announcement by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of an auction which will include solar next year appears to back prime minister Boris Johnson’s claims to be serious about the nation’s net-zero carbon ambition.