President Santiago Peña enacted on Tuesday night Decree No. 6034/2026, which regulates Law No. 7599 on Non-Conventional Renewable Energies, a milestone in Paraguay's energy policy. The regulation breaks the historic state monopoly on electricity production and establishes rules for the private sector to generate, trade, and export energy from non-hydraulic renewable sources.
After the decree was signed, the National Electricity Administration (ANDE) sent the terms and conditions to the National Directorate of Public Procurement (DNCP) to launch the first international solar energy auction in the Chaco. The pilot project plans to install 140 MW of solar capacity in the Loma Plata region, equivalent to 64% of the capacity of the Acaray plant.
ANDE's head, engineer Félix Sosa, highlighted that the final document is the result of technical coordination among the Ministry of Public Works and Communications (through the Vice Ministry of Mines and Energy), the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and the DNCP itself, with advice from the World Bank. The legislation exempts certain criteria from the Public Supply and Procurement Law.
ANDE plans to hold a virtual public hearing next week to clarify the conditions and receive suggestions from the local and international market regarding the large-scale generation tender, as Sosa mentioned in an interview with former ANDE president, engineer Pedro Ferreira, on radio Ñandutí.
The new regulation establishes four legal and commercial figures for participation in the system. The first two are the self-generator and the cogenerator, primarily aimed at self-consumption. Residential or commercial customers will be able to install solar panels on their roofs and inject surplus into ANDE's grid, which will pay for this energy based on a reference tariff equivalent to the average generation cost, updated annually by the enforcement authority.
For industries, the cogenerator figure allows the use of waste from production processes for self-supply. If they guarantee firm energy delivery, compensation will include variables such as power and auxiliary voltage regulation services. Sosa clarified that none of these modalities will require public bidding or exclusivity contracts.
The third modality, called pure generator, constitutes the core for attracting large-scale investments. Private companies will build and operate generation plants to sell all production to ANDE through public price tenders, with contracts of up to 30 years, according to demand projections from ANDE's Master Plan until 2043.
For the pilot project, ANDE signed a 30-year lease contract with the local Mennonite cooperative, securing 200 strategic hectares just 5 km from the regional electrical substation. The tender will not evaluate proposals based on ANDE's average cost tariff, but rather on a maximum reference price calculated jointly with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which will weigh current photovoltaic technology costs and the minimum rate of return required by investors.
The technical schedules foresee completion of the award this year, construction and electromechanical assembly in about 24 months between 2027 and 2028, and the start of commercial energy injection from 2029. Sosa said the event will serve as an operational test for the national interconnected system, allowing the subsequent launch of series tenders for other areas.