Czechia auctioned wind power support just below the price cap. The highest of 23 winning bids was ten hellers under the maximum

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has published a report evaluating the second auction for supporting electricity from renewable sources, and for wind power plants one figure emerges from it that explains almost everything else. The maximum reference price was 3,200 crowns per megawatt-hour, and the highest successful bid ended at 3,199.90 crowns — a tenth of a crown below the cap. A second figure supplies the explanation: the tender covered 360.8 megawatts, and 242.5 received support, i.e. 67.2 percent of the announced volume. No valid bid was thus rejected because the volume ran out. Ministerstvo průmyslu a obchodu ↗

Prices that differ by fractions of a crown

The Ministry announced the call on December 2, 2025, accepted bids until February 24, 2026, and published the evaluation report in April. In the wind category, it received 24 bids, of which 23 met the conditions and all 23 succeeded. The single rejected bid belonged to the company Zero carbon energo for the Arnultovice project — it did not submit a bank guarantee, thereby failing to meet points 12 and 13 of the call. Ministerstvo průmyslu a obchodu ↗

The range of winning prices is 3,149.50 to 3,199.90 crowns per megawatt-hour. The entire difference between the cheapest and most expensive bid is thus 50.40 crowns, and the cheapest is 1.58 percent below the cap. Ministerstvo průmyslu a obchodu ↗

How the prices are distributed is also interesting. The company RenoEnergie submitted seven bids and fit them into five price levels: 3,149.50, 3,149.60, 3,149.70, twice 3,149.80, and twice 3,199.90 crowns. The gaps between its bids are thus fractions of a crown. The maximum of 3,199.90 crowns was reached by two bids in the auction. Ministerstvo průmyslu a obchodu ↗

Why the price didn't fall

An auction is meant to push the price down, and it works by having more projects compete for a limited volume of support than can be supported — whoever can manage with a lower price pushes out the more expensive one. Here, support went to 242.5 megawatts out of the 360.8 tendered, i.e. 67.2 percent. There were fewer bids than spots, so the mechanism that pushes the price down had nothing to work with — the result shows that no valid bid fell out due to volume exhaustion. What prices bidders would have offered under excess demand cannot be read from the document. Ministerstvo průmyslu a obchodu ↗

That this isn't inevitable is shown by two European auctions from the first half of the year. In France, 2.4 gigawatts were submitted for 0.8 gigawatts, i.e. three times as much, and the average price ended at 77 euros per megawatt-hour — 66 percent of supported projects were repowering, meaning renewal of existing turbines. In Germany, 2.5 gigawatts were auctioned, the average was 51 euros, and the lowest successful bid was 44 euros. In both cases, according to WindEurope, the submitted capacity was significantly higher than the tendered amount. WindEurope ↗

Direct comparison of the figures has its limits, though. Auctions differ in conditions, duration of support, and whether the price is indexed to inflation — in Czechia, according to Ekonomický deník, it is not indexed, and the agreed price applies for the full twenty years. The same source ranks Czechia with 129.80 euros per megawatt-hour in first place for price, ahead of Britain with 85.60, France with 77.10, Greece with 67.40, and Moldova with 62 euros. This is a ranking taken from a single source, not an independently verified first place. Ekonomický deník ↗

At the Czech National Bank exchange rate from September 9, i.e. 24.25 crowns per euro, the cap of 3,200 crowns is approximately 132 euros, and the lowest bid of 3,149.50 crowns is about 130 euros. The reference price, however, is not the entire sum the state will pay out: the auction bonus is derived from the difference between it and the market price of electricity. Ministerstvo průmyslu a obchodu ↗

Who received support

The largest individual bid, 54 megawatts, was submitted by WEB VP Řasnice — a subsidiary of the Austrian WEB Windenergie — for a site near Frýdlant in northern Bohemia. Next come three projects of the ADI group at 21.6 megawatts each, and a pair, WINDOL with 18.6 megawatts and VTE Zátor with 4.5 megawatts — Ekonomický deník assigned these to the Micronix Group, which thus comes to a combined 23.1 megawatts. Ministerstvo průmyslu a obchodu ↗

The NOHO group has the most individual bids — nine, of which five are for the Vojtěchov site with 35.8 megawatts and four for Anenská Studánka with 21 megawatts. RenoEnergie submitted seven bids totaling 39.6 megawatts, each individually smaller than nine megawatts. The sum of all 23 bids gives exactly 242.5 megawatts. The ČEZ group and other major players did not appear on the list. Ministerstvo průmyslu a obchodu ↗ Ekonomický deník ↗

The condition for support is putting the plant into operation, not merely completing construction — and the deadlines differ. Seventeen bids have December 2029 listed in the report, three ADI projects have November 2027, two have November 2029, and one bid from Zero carbon energo has June 2027. Ministerstvo průmyslu a obchodu ↗

In the previous auction, only a single project applied

The April result looks good only in comparison with the previous auction. The Ministry announced that one in May 2025 for 180 megawatts with a maximum price of 3,500 crowns per megawatt-hour; the results came in September — and only a single project applied — a turbine with a capacity of 4.2 megawatts from the company WEB VP Břežany, i.e. less than three percent of the announced volume. It received the full maximum price. oEnergetice ↗

According to oEnergetice, the sticking point at the time was the requirement to submit a building permit with the application. In the same series of auctions, however, combined heat and power generation filled the volume — of 57 evaluated bids, 48 succeeded with a total of 905 megawatts. This alone does not prove that the auction mechanism is flawless, nor that the obstacle was exclusively wind-related — it only shows that another technology filled the volume. oEnergetice ↗

Permitting and politics

Ekonomický deník cites as reasons for the higher Czech price weaker average wind, more expensive transport of components inland, permitting that takes at least seven years, and the lack of inflation indexation. Ekonomický deník ↗

The case near the municipality of Velká Štáhle in the Bruntál region illustrates what permitting looks like in practice. The investor there originally intended ten wind turbines, but withdrew the application and submitted a smaller proposal — it ultimately received a unified environmental opinion for three turbines, and even those still need zoning and building permits. Ekonomický deník ↗

Obstacles are not only bureaucratic and need not come from the municipality where construction is taking place. In Vojtěchov, five turbines are to be built — exactly as many bids succeeded there in the auction — and according to iROZHLAS, the municipality is in agreement with the investors. The neighboring town of Hlinsko has opposed it, and has also challenged the initial approval by the Pardubice Region. Proponents of development also argue with municipal finances — according to the Svaz moderní energetiky, a single wind turbine can bring a municipality more than a million crowns a year. iROZHLAS ↗ e15 ↗

A political layer was added by the government's July decision on the conditions for so-called acceleration zones, i.e. areas where, under European rules, wind power construction is meant to be simpler. Lidové noviny commentator Luděk Niedermayer assessed that the result did not actually make construction easier. This is an opinion piece, not a news finding. Lidovky ↗

What the actual scale is

The figures take on another dimension when compared with total capacity. According to oEnergetice, Czechia had approximately 377 megawatts installed in wind power plants at the end of 2025, and the auctions are set to add 378 megawatts between 2027 and 2029 — effectively doubling the capacity, if the supported projects are actually built. oEnergetice ↗

The entire Czech wind sector was thus, by the end of 2025, smaller than what Germany allocated in a single auction: 2.5 gigawatts is 2,500 megawatts, more than six times the then-Czech installed capacity. WindEurope ↗

From the auctions, as of April 30, 2026, 26.94 megawatts were in operation across three projects — SYNERGION Jívová with 11.3 megawatts, LHOTA BRNO with 9.04, and VTE Maletín with 6.6 megawatts. All three have a reference price of 3,500 crowns per megawatt-hour, the higher cap from one of the previous auctions. oEnergetice ↗

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Illustrative photo: wind turbines near the municipality of Horní Věžnice in the Havlíčkův Brod district in the Vysočina region. Photo: Jiří Zelenka (Pohled 111) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0