The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources of Turkey has awarded 800MW of solar PV in its latest auction.
The 6th Renewable Resource Areas (YEKA) for solar PV capacity received 146 applications and six projects were awarded capacity, each with a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) in place.
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The size of the successful projects ranges between 40MW to 385MW. However, only two projects have a capacity higher than 100MW. These solar PV plants will be built across five provinces: Konya, Karaman, Malatya, Van, Antalya and Kütahya.
Projects in this tender were required to have a minimum of 75% domestic content for their solar modules, said Alparslan Bayraktar, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, adding: “The panels to be used here will be panels produced in Turkey.”
Awarded projects will have a 60-month period from the contract signing date during which they can sell power on the free market. After this period, when the PPA begins, the electricity will be sold to the transmission system at US$0.035/kWh.
Regarding the purchase price guarantee, Bayraktar said: “When you look at today’s market prices, it was realized at a price less than half. All these processes are extremely valuable in terms of showing how big our country’s renewable energy potential is and showing our country’s trust in the renewable energy sector, energy sector and economy.”
Bayraktar added that Turkey is working on a reform to accelerate the investment processes for solar PV and wind projects. “In this way, we will implement projects that will reduce our country’s external dependency on energy, contribute to meeting energy demand, and of course contribute to our climate goals and emission reduction goals as soon as possible.”
77GW of installed solar PV by 2035
Turkey aims to award at least 2GW of capacity this year through other YEKA tenders, without specifying how much would be allocated to solar PV. With these tenders, the government aims to accelerate the installation of renewables in the country as it aims to have 120GW of installed solar PV and wind capacity by 2035, of which 77GW will be solar PV.
Installed solar PV capacity in Turkey sits at nearly 20GW (19.6GW) at the end of 2024, according to a recent report from think tank Ember. The country doubled its installed PV capacity in the span of two years and a half – the country had 9.7GW of installed solar capacity in July 2022 – and exceeded its 2025 target of 18GW more than a year and a half in advance.
The main driver for solar PV’s growth in the country came from unlicensed plants, primarily for self-consumption, which accounted for 90% of new installations in the past four years, said Ember.
