Sixty-seven farm cooperatives have won the right to sell a combined 281.32 megawatts of solar power to the national grid in a draw held on Thursday.
On Monday, the Energy Regulatory Commission announced 167 cooperatives were qualified to enter Thursday's draw. They had a combined output of 835MW.
The official results will be announced on Tuesday.
The supplied solar-farm output is lower than the 300MW to be bought in the first round from government agencies and farm cooperatives, Veerapol Jirapraditkul, spokesman of the commission, said on Thursday.
"The offers in some areas are higher than our feed-in capacities. If the supply exceeds the feed-in capacity, we'll buy only at the maximum. But if there is surplus feed-in capacities, suppliers next in line will have a chance," he said.
Of the 67 winners, six will supply to the grid through the Metropolitan Electricity Authority and the rest through the Provincial Electricity Authority.
The feed-in tariff is 5.66 baht a unit (one kilowatt-hour).
After the names are officially announced next week, the qualified suppliers will sign 25-year power purchase agreements within 120 days and commercial operation will begin no later than Dec 30 this year.
To promote the use of alternative energy, authorities offered to buy renewable energy from households and very small producers who will be paid relatively high feed-in tariffs as an incentive.
It planned to buy 800MW from government agencies and farm cooperatives. In the first stage of which selection was made on Thursday, 300MW will be bought from state agencies and farm cooperatives. However, no agencies were qualified in this round because they would have violated the public-private partnership law.
In the second phase, 500MW will be bought from state agencies (400MW) and farm cooperatives (100MW). The screening of suppliers will be done late this year or early next year.
Authorities also plan to buy 36MW of biomass power in feed-in tariff bidding in the South next month before the second round will buy from sources all over the country.