A Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) specifies the contract between two parties: a) the seller, who generates electricity,and; b) the buyer, who is looking to buy electricity. It defines all the terms for the sale between the two. A PPA secures the payment stream for a Build-Own Transfer (BOT) or concession project for an independent power plant (IPP). It is between the purchaser (often a state-owned electricity utility) and a privately owned power producer.

While tender schemes open up flexible and innovative design options (e.g. time blocks, storage components), the quality of the design and implementation is crucial to the success of competitive tenders. In Chile, an energy auction in November 2017 received the lowest price for solar in the region with 2.15 US cent/kWh after the tender process was amended in 2015 (Law 20,805) and a longer contract term (20 years) and different sized hourly blocks of energy supply (day, peak, night, 24 hours) were introduced.

Competitive solar tenders have decisively contributed to rapidly declining solar PV prices across the globe. In Saudi Arabia, an October 2017 auction resulted in a new record low for solar PV with one bid at 1.79 US cent/kWh. Solar prices are, however, not fully comparable because of country-specific factors and different parameters of each auction. Read more.

Pre-Investment Surveys

Using a combination of “medium term service contracts” and capital subsidies, the program was designed to develop self-sustaining solar home systems in these regions. Unlike other earlier SHS programs in other countries, the Bolivian program placed heavy emphasis on independent monitoring of the performance of winning service providers.

For more information about this sector, please visit Public–Private Partnerships in Energy and Power.