Mexico to hold second renewable auction(1)

Less than a month after announcing results from Mexico’s first renewable energy auction, SENER, the country’s energy secretariat, has approved a second auction that will be held later this year.

CENACE, the national energy regulatory agency, will publish auction rules on 13 May and will announce the companies that have placed bids on 4 July. The auction is scheduled to be finished by the end of September. Winning bidders will gain long-term power purchase agreements to build renewable energy projects. Clean Energy Certificates and firm capacity may also be offered in the auction, according to SENER.

The second auction will “take into account the experiences of the first auction,” which was the first since Mexico opened its energy sector to privatisation in 2013.

Winning bidders from the first auction were offered 15 to 20-year power purchase agreements to build over 2GW of renewable energy projects. Eighteen contracts representing $2.6 billion in clean energy investment were given to 11 companies from Spain, France, Italy, the US, Canada and China.

Close to 1.7GW of solar contracts were awarded in the last auction, and Italian renewable developer Enel Green Power (EGP) was the largest winner. EGP was awarded contracts to build three projects generating a combined 787MW. Other winning solar developers include Canadian Solar subsidiary Recurrent Energy, Vega Solar and JinkoSolar.

There were wind project contracts awarded for 394MW, the largest going to Acciona to build a 168MW wind farm.