BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 1. Azerbaijan plans to hold its first auction on renewable energy projects in the first half of 2023, Elnur Soltanov, Deputy Minister of Energy of Azerbaijan told Trend.
"We have already defined the area where it’s going to be visualized, probably it will be a solar sight at first, but there is no limitation for it to be a wind power-plant either. The work is going on. Currently, we are working on the RFQ (request for quote) and RFP (request for proposal) documents, which are required and necessary for these kinds of processes," he said.
According to the deputy minister, Azerbaijan has been holding a very transparent selection process for those companies participating in the implementation of renewable energy projects in the country.
"When we granted a 230 MW solar power plant to Masdar, and the same thing with ACWA Power, it was a very tough and very transparent selection process, we made clear to the world corporations what our intent is - they applied, we had dozens of companies interested and eventually, through selection process, that everybody knew the rules of, we eventually chose Masdar, ACWA Power, bp, and every other participant knew why those companies have been selected.
So there are different legitimate selection processes. It’s not just about options all the time, and again, given the specificities of our energy system the price system that are prevailing in Azerbaijan, the sights that we have, potential sights we have, that was quite successful process that we started. But holding auctions has always been a part of the plan and we are very glad that we are getting close to realizing that very soon, he concluded.