The Polish Energy Regulatory Office (ERO) has announced the winners of its solar and wind auction for projects above 1 MW, held on November 5.
The minimum auction price was PLN162.83/MWh ($42.48) and the maximum bid came in at PLN233.29, the regulator said, without providing additional details. The published list of winning bids showed solar was finally able to secure more than one project.
In the first auction of the kind, held in November 2018, wind took all the allocated capacity. The final minimum price in last year’s auction was PLN288.99/MWh with a maximum of PLN364.99. The ERO said it selected 101 offers out of 164 pre-qualified bids.
It is still not known how much PV may have driven down the final prices in this year’s procurement round, but it is clear it took some share of the 15-year power supply deals awarded in the auction, partly because of newly introduced restrictions on wind power deployment, as predicted by Poland’s Institute for Renewable Energy in September. An estimated 2.5 GW of combined wind and solar generation capacity is expected to have been awarded in the exercise.
This copy was amended on 07/01/20 to clarify the higher minimum and maximum energy price bids referred to in the article were recorded in November 2018, with the November 2019 exercise resulting in markedly lower tariffs. The previous reference in the copy to solar taking most of the allotted generation capacity has been removed as wind again dominated.
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The last Paragraph seems strange:
Why should PV have driven down the tariffs, as they were higher (all: min, max, avg) this year than the year before, when only wind placed the lowest bids.
And, PV surely did not take the largest share of the awarded Projects – it was only like 5-8 PV Projects in contrast to over 90 wind farms.
Hi Joerg and thanks for your comment. You are right to point out some confusion between which prices were registered in the auctions held in 2018 and last year, which has now been amended in the copy. The contribution PV may have made to reducing tariffs is now hopefully clear. The article also mistakenly stated, as you point out, solar this time secured most of the allocated capacity. In fact, wind again dominated. Thanks for keeping us on our toes.