Spanish government to allocate over 10 GW of PV in auctions until 2025

From pv magazine Spain

The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) has published a calendar for the period 2020-2025 for the renewable energy auctions that will be held under a new procurement regime approved by the government last week.

In the first and only auction that will be held this year, the Spanish authorities are planning to allocate around 3.6 GW of renewable energy capacity, of which 1 GW for the PV technology, 1 GW for wind power, and 80 MW for biomass projects with the remaining, around 1.5 GW being allocated with no technology restrictions.

For the following five years, including 2025, solar is expected to have a quota of over 1.8 GW per year and wind 1.5 GW. A small quota of 100 MW will also be granted to CSP technology starting from 2021, with total capacity reaching 500 MW in 2025.

The auction scheme makes it possible to submit projects consisting of one or more technologies and allows the use of storage as long as it is used to manage the energy produced by the facility itself.

€100,000/MW to participate

The MITECO has also defined the guarantees necessary to participate: €60,000 are required per megawatt, which will be returned according to the project’s advances: €12,000 when the government is able to locate the awarded capacity in a concrete project, within six months; €18,000 upon obtaining the construction authorization, within 12 months; and the remaining €30,000 upon commissioning.

These guarantees are added to the €40,000 per megawatt charged to access the network.

Overall, the Spanish government will allocate around 19.4 GW of renewable energy capacity through this auction scheme. This is well below the more than 60,000 MW the government expects to be installed by 2030 in the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan (Pniec). The government explains that “this auction mechanism is complementary to other support instruments, such as lines of aid for investment in renewables financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), executed by the Institute for Diversification and Savings of Energy, or medium and long-term electricity supply contracts (PPAs).”