Lightsource BP has said it won more than 40% of the total awarded capacity in Greece’s renewables auction last week through a co-development partnership, increasing its global presence to 14 countries.
The auction success forms part of a larger 640MWp solar portfolio that the company will develop with Greek renewable energy company Kiefer TEK, which will act as engineering, procurement and construction contractor.
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Lightsource BP, which will initially invest around €160 million (US$196 million) locally on areas such as procurement services and the creation of over 300 construction jobs, expects more than 200MWp of PV capacity to come online in the next 24 months, including the 140MWp won in the auction.
The company, a joint venture with oil major BP, will sell part of the project capacity to the government at the bid pricing, while the remaining uncontracted electricity will be marketed to commercial and industrial customers and sold on the open electricity market.
“This is a landmark moment for our large-scale solar development team in Greece, which has been working on local opportunities for less than a year. The auction process is enabling the country to accelerate the decarbonisation of its energy sector, while providing an attractive market for global energy players,” said Vlasios Souflis, who is responsible for the global expansion of Lightsource BP, and added that the company will continue to seek opportunities to expand its footprint in Greece.
Taking place on 24 May, Greece’s latest renewables auction saw PV bidders win all the available 350MW of capacity after more than 1GW of solar and wind projects were bid into the process.
Solar projects up to 20MW were permitted to participate in the tender, which saw Greek company Egnatia submit the lowest bid of €0.03297/kWh (US$0.04018/kWh), a record low price for the country’s renewables auctions.
For Lightsource BP, the announcement comes days after it entered into a co-development partnership in Portugal for five utility-scale PV plants with a combined capacity of 1.35GW, adding to recent solar asset acquisitions in markets such as Italy and Spain. The company now has a 20GW solar project pipeline globally.
