The Energy and Public Utility Regulatory Authority of Hungary (MEKH) announced in early March that the fifth round of auctions under its renewable energy support scheme METÁR has been initiated. Bid submissions will be accepted from March 25 to 28. This announcement has also been reported by other renewable energy news outlets.
According to the available information provided by the Hungarian government and other news outlets, this auction round is similar to the previous ones and consists of two categories. The “Small Category” involves tenders for projects that are 5-20MW in scale with the allotted power production set at 144GWh per year. The “Big Category” involves tenders for projects that are 20-50MW in scale with the allotted power production set at 720GWh per year. Hence, the total power production that this auction seeks from the tendered renewable generation assets comes to 864GWh per year.
Launched in 2017, METÁR aims to spur renewable energy investments by providing special grants to projects within a tender process. Specifically, the subsidy kicks in when the development cost of a new project exceeds 50% of the initial investment cost. The information provided by renewable energy news websites about the results of the previous auction rounds is somewhat vague and conflicting. The third round, which was launched in July 2021, apparently awarded 299GWh (or 183MW) worth of PV tenders, though there are few details about the winning bids. The weighted average price of the Small Category (0.3-1MW) of the third round came to HUF 21.26 per kWh, whereas the weighted average price of the Big Category (1-20MW) came to HUF 16.15 per kWh.
Hungary like other EU member states has a National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) with targets for greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy share. The latest version of Hungary’s NECP calls for 20% of renewable energy share in primary energy demand by 2030. In other related news, Greencells Group will be developing a 65MW PV project in the Hungarian city of Szügy with the financial support provided by Berenberg. This announcement was made in early March as well. Citing data from MEKH, an article published at website CEENERGYNEWS stated that the total installed PV generation capacity in Hungary grew ten-folds from 153MW in 2015 to 1.848GW in September 2020.