Israel's Electricity Market Regulatory Authority has revealed the final results for the country's second solar-plus-storage tender.
The regulator assigned 608.95 MW of PV capacity across 33 projects submitted by seven developers. Israel-based companies Doral Group Renewable Energy Resources LTD and SoleGreen secured 200 MW and 95.6 MW capacity allotments, respectively.
EDF Energies Nouvelles Israel LTD, the Israeli unit of French energy giant EDF, was awarded projects totaling 90 MW and Israel-headquartered Enlight Renewable Energy secured 82 MW. Furthermore, Tel Aviv-based independent power producer Energix Renewable Energies Ltd and Israeli company Meshakim & Partners were assigned 80 MW and 40 MW of PV capacity, respectively. The remaining 21.35 MW was secured by Israel's infrastructure and real estate company Shikun & Binui.
The projects will sell power at a final price of ILS0.1745/kWh ($0.0544) and will have to begin delivering power to the Israeli grid by July 2023. A storage capacity of around 2,400 MWh will be linked to the selected solar power projects.
The regulator had pre-qualified 10 bidders with proposals for 55 projects with a total of 870 MW of capacity.
“Israel is a young PV market, launched in 2009,” the director of Israel's Green Energy Association, Eitan Parnass, told pv magazine. “For many years, the government has delayed implementation aiming to avoid subsidies, but in the past three years things have changed.” According to him, the government is now pushing for Israel to become a leader of solar PV. “A lot will have to be done to get there, but the impressive quantities and results prove the seriousness of both the government and the local PV industry,” Parnass also stated.
In the first tender of the same kind, finalized in mid-July, the Electricity Market Regulatory Authority assigned 168 MW of capacity. This auction concluded with a final price of ILS0.1990/kWh.
The nation supports PV through tenders for large scale projects and operates an incentive scheme for rooftop PV, offering feed-in tariffs.
The government approved in October a plan submitted by energy minister Yuval Steinitz to deploy around 15 GW more solar capacity to help raise the 2030 target for the proportion of national electricity drawn from renewables from 17% to 30%. The new ILS80 billion ($23 billion) plan will add to the new energy and water infrastructure plan announced in late April, to help the country’s economy recover from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. That strategy included the deployment of 2 GW of solar generation capacity.
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Non renewable energy sources should only exist for emergencies so we need to have 100% renewable sources + another 25% non renewable as backup for emergency only.