Ireland’s state-owned power grid, EirGrid, has released the provisional auction results for its Renewable Electricity Support Scheme 1 (RESS 1).

RESS 1 falls under Ireland’s pivotal climate action plan, which has a 70% renewable electricity target by 2030. This program uses a competitive auction process to determine which generators receive support for up to 15 years.

The auction which opened on July 21, 2020, and closed on July 28, 2020, saw 114 applicants, of which only 109 qualified (including eight community projects). Of these, 82 were provisionally successful, while the rest remained unsuccessful for the auction. Of the 82 provisionally successful projects, 63 are solar, and 19 are onshore wind power projects.

According to a press release issued by EirGrid, the weighted average strike price of provisionally successful offers for all projects was €74.08 (~$87.03)/MWh. For solar projects, the average price was €72.92 (~$85.66)/MWh, whereas, for community projects, the average price was €104.15 (~$122.35)/MWh.

According to EirGrid, in total, 2,236.65 GWh was provisionally successful, which included 767.315 GWh of solar and 1,469.338 GWh of onshore wind. Similarly, in terms of offered capacity, the successful offers represented over 1.2 GW capacity with over 796.3 MW in solar bidding and 479.2 MW in wind.

Under the community-led projects category, communities will be allowed to develop their own renewable energy projects and sell the energy back to the grid.

JBM Solar Developments Limited made the highest offer for solar at 119 MW. On the other hand, Oweninny Power 2 DAC made the highest offer among onshore wind projects at 83 MW.

The final auction result will be declared on September 10, 2020, and the projects will be awarded on September 25, 2020.

Meanwhile, in another international auction development, the Emirates Water and Electricity Company announced that it awarded the 2 GW Al Dhafra solar PV project to a consortium comprising Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, Masdar, JinkoPower, and EDF. EWEC replaced the earlier Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company (ADWEC) that was merged within the Ministry of Energy in 2018. The company said that it set the tariff for solar energy at United Arab Emirates Dirham (AED) 0.0497 (~$0.0135)/kWh based on the levelized cost of electricity.

Image Credit: Energy Ireland