A total of 27 wind and solar farm projects have secured 15-year Government support under the latest round of the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS 4).

The provisional results from the Government's flagship renewables scheme indicate that out of the 43 projects eligible to participate in the auction, 16 were not successful.

These projects have a combined capacity of 2,070.97 gigawatt hours (GWh), with 924.90GWh coming from 23 solar farm projects and 1,146GWh from four onshore wind farm projects, enough to power up to half a million homes.

The locations of the successful RESS 4 projects.

Price

The projects competed in an auction-based system, which favours bids with lower required support prices.

As with previous RESS auctions, support is only provided to renewable generators when market prices are low and generators are required to repay money to electricity customers when market prices are high.

The average support price for solar farms was €104.76 per megawatt hour (MWh), while the average support price for wind farms was €90.47/MWh.

The average weighted bid price for the auction is €96.85/MWh, representing a lower average price than both RESS 2 and RESS 3.

More analysis to come.

27 wind and solar farms secure Government support

Provisional results from the fourth round of the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme show that 27 wind and solar projects have successfully secured 15-year Government support.