Colombia’s RE auction concludes with no assigned project, new auction to be launched by end of June

The Colombian authorities said the received offers did not comply with the criteria for competition and market dominance. Enel Green Power, Canadian Solar, Trina Solar and Solarpack were among the developers that were admitted to the auction’s final phase.

February 26, 2019 Emiliano Bellini

Image: Edgar Jiménez, flickr

Colombia’s National Mining and Energy Planning Unit, UPME has selected no project in the renewable energy auctions it held today. The authority said the auction's failure was due to the fact that the project developers did not comply with the bidding terms established by the Colombian energy and gas regulator CREG.

UPME's director, Ricardo Ramírez specified that the projects did not comply with the required standards in terms of concentration and market dominance. He also revealed that that eight offers that were received for the auction came from Enel Greem Power Colombia, Isagen, Pacific Energy Company, Canadian Solar Energy Colombia, Trina Solar Colombia, SPV Villanueva, Guajira Eólica and Solarpack Colombia.

In a statement to pv magazine, the managing director of local consultancy Óptima consultores, Alejandro Lucio Chaustre, said that, the requirements for market concentration and dominance were not met, despite the participation of a good number of developers. “The UPME announced, however, that a new auction will be launched by the end of June,”he also said. “But CREG's bidding criteria, and especially the standards for competition and market dominance, should be changed,” he also stated. These criteria were conceived, he further explained, to avoid that a significant amount of allocated capacity may be assigned to a restricted number of participants.

The UPME has pre-selected 15 companies and 22 projects for the final stage of the procurement exercise, with 17 of the projects solar, four wind and one biomass.

Selected projects should have been awarded a 12-year PPA and should have started delivering power on December 1, 2021. The off-takers that were entitled to buy power from the projects, as announced by the UPME last week, are Cedenar, Codensa, Ebsa. Electricaribe, Electrohuila, Emgesa, Emsa, and Gecelca.

The auction processs had been started by the UPME at the beginning of January. The competition was open to renewable energy projects exceeding 10 MW in size.

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