Turkey’s renewable capacity is expected to expand by 35 percent, or almost 14 gigawatts (GW), by 2023, according to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) Renewables 2018 market analysis and forecast report released Monday.
The IEA forecasted that solar PV will lead this growth with 5.1 GW, onshore wind with 4.4 GW, hydropower with 3.2 GW, bioenergy with 0.7 GW and geothermal with 0.3 GW.
The IEA also expects that annual onshore wind capacity additions, which will no longer be supported by feed-in-tariffs after 2020, are to decelerate in 2018 and 2019 and slowly gain speed again after 2020.
"Onshore wind forecast has been revised down due to a lull in project development, resulting from the transition from feed-in-tariffs (FITs) to auctions," the IEA noted.
Turkey offers feed-in-tariffs for renewable energy power plants under its Renewable Energy Support Scheme (YEKDEM). However, Turkey's Energy and Natural Resources Ministry plans to end YEKDEM by 2020 and it is yet uncertain what will happen after the scheme is terminated.
"For wind capacity, delays in transmission auctions and permitting for projects licensed under the FIT scheme have created a lull in project development; commissioning of these projects should begin in the second quarter of 2019. In addition, the winning project (YEKA) from the first 1 GW wind tender has not yet received financing," the agency explained.
A Kalyon - Turkerler - Siemens Gamesa consortium won Turkey's first 1 GW wind tender in August last year, which broke a world record with the offered price of $3.48 per kilowatt-hour of electricity production as the lowest cost of electricity per hour accepted from wind power generation.
The IEA said the Renewable Energy Resources Zones (YEKA) project will be commissioned in 2020-21, while additional tenders scheduled in 2019 and 2020 should support new wind capacity to be commissioned at the end of the forecast period.
Turkey plans to hold four 250-megawatt YEKA wind energy tenders by the end of this year, according to a specifications draft released by the Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Ministry last week. The country will also offer, for the first time, a total of 1.2 GW of capacity in offshore wind for which the application deadline is set for Oct. 23.
"Although offshore wind development areas had been selected in March 2018 and developers are expected to submit their bids by October 2018, commissioning of the first capacities is not anticipated by 2023," the IEA said.
- Solar
On the solar PV side, the agency said that Turkey's capacity additions more than quadrupled in 2017 to 2.6 GW, mostly through ‘unlicensed’ projects, but growth is expected to decline significantly over the forecast period as a result of stricter regulations and increased grid fees that make solar PV technology 'less economically attractive.'
The IEA anticipated that utility-scale projects under the YEKA tendering scheme would drive expansion, with the first 1 GW project to come online in the fourth quarter of 2019. Turkey held a 1 GW solar YEKA tender in 2017 with a winning bid of $6.99 for one megawatt-hour and $3.48 for 1,000-megawatts.
The agency underlined that the YEKA tenders to be held in 2019 and 2020 are included in this forecast. It added that for commercial and residential applications, a new self-consumption and remuneration regulation is being drafted and no final version is yet available.
"As a result, this forecast assumes that commercial and residential applications expand after 2020, but amount to 1 GW over 2018-23," the IEA said.
- Hydropower and geothermal
According to the agency, hydropower capacity growth over 2018-2023 period is expected to be 68 percent lower than over the previous six years. It projected that commissioning of most large-scale projects under construction are expected in 2018, leaving the project pipeline relatively empty during the forecast period.
"However, generous FITs and good resource availability are driving additional geothermal growth," it concluded.
(Anadolu Agency)
