South Korea awards almost 1.9GW of offshore wind capacity

South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy has awarded nearly 1.9GW of offshore wind capacity across five projects in the country’s latest offshore wind auction.

More precisely, the ministry awarded 1,886MW of offshore wind capacity across three fixed-bottom projects, one of which is in two phases, and one floating wind project.

The projects chosen are the 750MW Firefly floating wind project developed by Equinor, Vena Enery’s 500MW Taean, Daehan Green Power’s 104MW Yeonggwang Yawol, Jeonnam’s 532MW Anma – which is the only two-phase project. Anma is split across two phases, one of which has a 224MW capacity while the other has a 308MW capacity.

With that, the government also awarded 20-year fixed tariff power purchase agreements to the four developers. The auction’s ceiling price was set at $124.3 per megawatt-hour.

The ministry opened a tender for 2.8GW of wind and solar energy capacity back in October. It set aside 1.5GW of capacity for offshore wind. The invitation to tender was later issued and it offered 1GW of capacity for fixed-bottom offshore wind projects and 500MW of floating wind. Both of those targets were exceeded.