The Brazilian government on Friday awarded the rights to build 22 new renewable energy generation plants in the country, which will require investments of 2.95 billion reais (about 567.3 million dollars).
The licenses were awarded by the National Electricity Agency (Aneel, regulator) through an auction in which the winners agreed to sell the new energy at an average price 26.38% lower than that foreseen in the tender. .
The 22 plants (12 small hydroelectric plants, four solar parks, three wind farms, two biomass thermal plants and one municipal solid waste thermal plant) have a combined installed capacity of 557.45 megawatts (MW) and will be built in nine of the 27 states of the country with the commitment that they will start operating on January 1, 2027.
The energy generated by the new projects has already been acquired in the same auction by the distributors who supply the states of Minas Gerais (Cemig) and Pará (Equatorial Energia Celpa). The former signed contracts to keep 82% of the new energy and the latter bought the remaining 18%.
The energy purchase and sale contracts signed, lasting between 15 and 20 years, amount to 6,570 million reais (approximately 1,263.5 million US dollars) and guarantee the supply, on average, of 176.8 megawatts of energy at the price of 237.48 reais (approximately US $ 45.7) per megawatt hour.
Of the total contract, 87.3 megawatts will come from hydroelectric plants, 51.8 MW from solar plants; 23.5 MW of wind power; 13 MW of biomass thermoelectric and 1.2 MW of generation from solid waste.
The lower tariff for the energy supplied, a criterion for defining the winner, will allow the companies that win the rights to build biomass thermal plants to offer a 40% lower price than the one envisaged in the announcement.
“This type of auction continues to be an important mechanism to ensure the supply of energy at the lowest possible cost and to diversify the sources in the matrix, which is our main advantage over other countries,” said the president of the Chamber of Commerce of the electrical energy (CCEE), Rui Altieri.
The power tendered by the auction, however, was far below the bid, as 2,044 different projects with a combined installed capacity of 83,000 megawatts were registered in the competition.
