The Irish government has approved the final results of the country's second Renewable Energy Electricity Support Scheme 2 (RESS 2) auction, which will help deploy more than 1.9 GW of new wind and solar capacity.
The tender was completed in May and a total of 80 projects were awarded guaranteed price contracts for electricity for up to 16.5 years. The average strike price for the winning bidders was €97.87 ($102.05) per MWh, compared to €74.08/MWh in the 2020 first round.
The bulk of the capacity awarded (totaling about 1534 MW) was for solar photovoltaic (PV) projects, while 414 MW was for onshore wind in 11 projects. The selected projects were provisionally approved by state-owned power transmission operator Eirgrid and are scheduled to be completed between 2023 and 2025.
The combined annual output of the future power plant is estimated at 2748 GWh.
Ireland awarded 1.28 GW of solar and onshore wind capacity at its first renewable energy auction in 2020. The country plans to hold five similar rounds of meetings between 2020 and 2025 to support its goal of achieving 80 percent renewable energy by 2030.
The government noted that the new capacity contracted through the RESS 2 scheme will increase Ireland's installed renewable energy generation capacity by almost 20%.
