Tenders / Auctions (public reverse auctions)

• ELTS
• Conditions and procedure for auctions

On 09.07.2018, with an amendment to the Electricity Market Act (ELTS), Estonia introduced the broad legal framework for conducting RE auctions. The first tender was announced in November 2019, since that, two tenders have taken place and a third one is underway as of April 2021. The aim of the tenders is to promote cost effective renewable electricity development in Estonia.
The tenders are technology-neutral, the lowest bid wins. In case of equal price, larger quantities prevail. Only RES-E installations that would start to produce electricity for the first time after winning the auction are eligible. For the first three tenders, for each tender, the auctioned volume of electricity was 5 GWh, 5 GWh and 4.52 GWh annually respectively (Conditions and procedure for auctions). For the auctions conducted up to now, only installations that have electric capacity of more than 50 kW and less than 1 MW are eligible.
The next tender round is planned for October 2021, which will be considerably bigger that the previous rounds, with support for 450 GWh being auctioned. Whereas this will most likely be aimed at bigger RES projects with different conditions, the specific conditions have not been made public yet.

Electricity
For the first three tenders, for each tender, the auctioned volume of electricity was 5 GWh, 5 GWh and 4.52 GWh annually respectively (Conditions and procedure for auctions).

Sliding feed-in premium (also called Contracts for Difference – CfD)
The maximum support is EUR 0.0537 per kWh of renewable electricity, which is paid on top of the average electricity price of the preceding month. The support is progressively reduced if the average electricity price increases and can reach zero if the average price is above EUR 0.093 per kWh as the total price received by the generator cannot exceed EUR 0.093 per kWh.

The auction scheme is addressed at all eligible electricity producers who fulfill the conditions of the auction.

The procurement procedure of the aid is done through the form of closed static auctions. The bids have to be submitted electronically, the participant of a tender is obligated to attach required information about the installation, such as the production capacity etc.
Based on the offers, most competitive offers fulfilling the criteria are offered support for a period of 12 years.

• MKM
• TSO Elering