The Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy (MEM) has announced the postponement of national energy generation and transmission auctions. No date was specified for when the auctions would resume amid uncertainty over how long the Covid-19 crisis will persist in the nation.
The ministry stressed on its website the auctions had been postponed rather than cancelled and it hoped they would resume once the public health crisis had abated.
The National Energy Policy Council will evaluate when to resume the exercises. Solar projects were expected to compete in the A-4 and A-6 auctions planned for this year, so named because of the number of years developers have to connect facilities to the grid after signing power supply contracts.
In the A-6 auction held in October, the Brazilian government allocated 2,979 MW of generation capacity of which 530 MW was solar. The final average solar electricity price was BRL84.39/MWh ($16.1028 at today’s exchange rate) and was the lowest among the competing technologies.
In the A-4 auction in late June, the government allocated 211 MW of solar generation capacity and the lowest PV price bid came in at the equivalent of $17.30/MWh by that period’s exchange rate. At the time, that was the lowest electricity price ever recorded for large scale solar in an energy auction.
