Russia Selects 775 MW Solar PV Capacity in Latest RE Auction

Russian trading system administrator JSC ATS has announced the results of renewable energy auction that came to a close on September 9, 2021. A total of 774.8 MW (rounded up to 775 MW) solar PV capacity has made the cut.

The capacity of 18 winning solar power projects ranges between 8.47 MW to 60 MW, with 9 facilities selected to come online by December 1, 2023, and the remaining 9 by December 1, 2024. The lowest winning bid for solar PV projects was determined at RUB 4.33 ($0.059) per kWh for 2×60 MW facilities.

JSC ATS reviewed 89 solar plants (10 times higher than the available capacity), 100 wind power projects and three hydropower proposals, according to the Russian Renewable Energy Development Association (RREDA), also referred to as ARVE. The auction’s average price stood at ₽5.18/kWh (US$0.071/kWh).

Solar Retail LLC was one of the winners, but the largest winner with 10 projects was Unigreen Power LLC which is an independent power producer (IPP) and is part of Unigreen Energy LLC, a subsidiary of Hevel Solar’s majority stakeholder Ream Management. In July 2021, Unigreen Energy started construction of 1.3 GW silicon N-type monocrystalline ingots and wafers capacity, along with a 1 GW heterojunction cell fab in Russia.

As for the wind energy space, the winning projects were a total of 48 that were selected for a total capacity of 1.85 GW capacity and 3 hydropower facilities of 96 MW capacity.

In August 2021, the Russian Association of Wind Power Industry (RAWI) said the Russian Energy Agency (REA) plans to launch a renewable energy tender for 6.7 GW, including 2.4 GW of solar PV capacity in September 2021, under RES CDA 2.0 support mechanism.

Russia had around 1.5GW of installed solar by the end of last year while it continues to sink money into fossil fuel projects.