Turkey's clean energy generation received around TL 4.6 billion ($663 million) in incentive payments in March through the Renewable Energy Support Scheme (YEKDEM), according to Turkey's Energy Exchange Istanbul (EXIST) data on Friday.

In March, a total of 817 facilities, with an installed capacity of 21,049 megawatts, received financial backing under YEKDEM and produced 8.4 million megawatt-hours of electricity.

Turkey, which wants to fully utilize local and renewable energy sources efficiently to support its development, offers feed-in tariffs for renewable energy plants including wind, hydropower, geothermal, biomass and solar through the YEKDEM scheme.

Renewable energy plants under the scheme are granted incentives, the value of which is dependent on the type of renewable energy used.

The scheme, which started in 2011, supports wind and hydropower plants at a cost of $0.073 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), geothermal facilities at $0.105 kWh, and solar and biomass plants at $0.133 kWh. These figures can also vary slightly depending on the use of locally produced equipment in the plants.

Turkey plans to end this renewable incentive scheme by 2020 and is working on a more updated and efficient replacement.