Italy has awarded 1.1GW of solar PV in its Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA) non-price criteria FER-X auction.
In total, 88 projects have been awarded, which represents nearly half of the 157 bids—with a combined capacity of 1.85GW—that were selected to participate in the tender process in November.
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Organised by the country’s energy management agency, Gestore dei Servizi Energetici (GSE), the tender sought to award projects that use components that are of non-Chinese origin.
This is aligned with the European Union’s NZIA “non-price criteria” that seeks to diversify the supply chain of solar PV products and reduce the region’s dependence on China. For this auction, projects that participated were required to procure non-Chinese products for at least four key products, such as solar cells, modules and inverters.
The average power price for this auction stood at €66.378/MWh (US$77.75/MWh), which is much higher than the average power price from the other FER-X tender that was recently held, and did not require bids to not use Chinese-made components.
The contrast in price difference between the two auctions is also due to the limitations on the supply of non-Chinese products, which will likely increase the price of the projects awarded. The highest price reached for the NZIA auction was set at €73/MWh.
Patrizio Donati, the co-founder and managing director at independent power producer, Terrawatt, recently wrote on PV Tech about this new auction and the complexity associated with participating in a tender that requires the procurement of solar products that are not made in China.
Half of the volume awarded located in Sicily
The region awarded the most projects was Sicily, with 22 of the 88 projects. It is followed by Emilia Romagna and Piedmont with 11 and ten, respectively.
In terms of volume, the ranking changes slightly. Sicily is still the region with the most capacity awarded, with its 22 projects combining for 583MW, which represents more than half of the 1.1GW solar PV awarded in the auction. Lazio is the second region with the highest volume awarded, with 184MW across eight projects, and Apulia—southern Italy—ranking third with 69MW awarded across seven projects.
Among the companies awarded capacity in the NZIA tender are solar developers and independent power producers (IPPs) X-Elio, Juwi, ContourGlobal, Ellomay Solar, FRV, R.Power, Enel and Enel Green Power, among others. Chinese solar PV manufacturer Trina Solar has also been awarded several projects, as shown in the searchable list below.
Furthermore, the majority of the projects awarded (71 out of 88) had a capacity of 10MW or less, while only 17 had a capacity higher than 10MW. Despite that, the larger-scale projects accounted for 756MW of the total volume awarded, with the largest project sitting at 144MW from investment platform Alta Capital.
After more than a decade as Large Scale Solar Europe, the event becomes SolarPLUS Europe to reflect the direction the market is heading. The 2026 edition will be in Milan on 15-16 April and will bring together developers, investors and utilities to discuss managing hybrid assets, European policy, cybersecurity of solar assets as well as the co-location of solar PV with energy storage. For more details and how to attend the event, visit the website here.
