The Round 2 tender of Argentina's RenovAr renewable energy auction programme was heavily oversubscribed, attracting a whopping 9.4 GW of bids, the government said on Thursday.
Developers bought 117 bidding documents and submitted 228 offers, representing 9,403 MW of capacity, way above the 1,200 MW initially required. The Ministry of Energy and Mining said the huge investor interest ensures a level of competition that will lead to a decline in the average cost of electricity generation.
Argentina launched Round 2 in August with a target to contract 550 MW of wind, 450 MW of solar, as well as biomass, small hydropower, biogas and landfill biogas projects.
The bids received include 99 solar projects with a combined capacity of 5,290 MW and 58 wind projects totalling 3,818 MW. Biomass projects of 188 MW are also in the running, as well as 60 MW of biogas, 15 MW of landfill biogas and 32 MW of small hydropower schemes.
The economic bids will be opened and the projects will be awarded next month. A list of the offers can be seen here.
PREVIOUS TENDERS
Argentina created the RenovAr programme in 2016 as a step towards reaching its target of renewables accounting for 20% of power demand by 2025. The first two tenders under the programme, Rounds 1 and 1.5, were held in the second half of 2016. A total of 2.4 GW of renewable projects were awarded under these.
Round 1, which was completed in October 2016, attracted 123 bids, representing about 6.3 GW of capacity, or six times the 1 GW originally sought. The successful projects were 29, with overall capacity of 1,142 MW, including 12 wind projects totalling 707 MW and four solar projects totalling 400 MW. To take advantage of the large amount of offers presented, the government decided to conduct an additional tender and said it was seeking 600 MW, split between 400 MW of wind and 200 MW of solar, under Round 1.5. This tender saw 47 offers for 2,486 MW of capacity and closed with 30 projects awarded representing 1,281 MW. The winning projects include 10 wind schemes for 765 MW and 20 solar projects for 516 MW.
The average prices for wind projects awarded in Rounds 1 and 1.5, were USD 59.4 and USD 53.3 per MWh, respectively, while for solar projects they were USD 59.8 and USD 54.9 per MWh.
All projects are listed here.
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Source: Twitter, @Renovables_Ar
