Brazil’s Cemig confirms 4.8GW of entries for solar and wind auction

ByAlice Grundy
August 16, 2021

Brazilian energy company Cemig has released details of its latest auction for solar and wind, with 4.8GW of installed capacity entering.
The auction is scheduled for the 24 August, with winners to sign contracts for the supply of energy to Cemig for periods between January 2024 and December 2038.
These clean power auctions are an initiative by the company to maintain its leadership in the sector, it said, with several auctions having been held since 2018.
Cemig’s wholesale energy purchase and sale superintendent, Marcos Aurelio Alvarenga Pimentel Jr, said the interest for this auction shows the company’s strategy of betting on this type of contract is “quite right”.
“We will have great competition from wind and solar energy projects located in different regions of the country,” he said.
It follows a turbulent period for power auctions in the country, with the renewable-only A-4 as well as the A-6 auctions, the latter of which is open to renewables although not exclusively, delayed due to COVID-19.
Solar was allowed into the A-6 auctions for the first time in 2019, while the average PV tariffs for the A-4 auction in 2019 of BRL67.48/MWh (around US$17.5/MWh) were described at the time as being the cheapest tariff ever achieved by any energy technology in the world.
This was soon beat by Portugal’s solar-only auction, which delivered an even lower €14.76/MWh (US$16.44) one month later.