Bids in the ACT government's wind auction are with Environment Minister Simon Corbell, with a decision on which wind farms will be funded expected within weeks.
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The winning bidders will receive a guaranteed 20-year feed-in tariff from the ACT government for the electricity they generate.
Mr Corbell said the timing of an announcement would depend on negotiations with winning bidders on the amount of the feed-in tariff.
The wind-farm auction is hotly contested, with farms in the Canberra region having secured planning approval, but awaiting the certainty that a government contract will offer.
Bids were submitted by 18 wind companies three months ago. The companies' joint capacity is 1000 megawatts. The government will fund 200 megawatts of capacity, from at least two wind farms.
Mr Corbell said the government hoped to make a decision "in the next couple of weeks". He would not say how many companies had topped the list of bidders assessed by a panel led by Ross Bunyon.
Wind is expected to be cost about half the price of solar power. The newly-opened Royalla Solar Farm is earning $186 for each megawatt hour of electricity it feeds into the grid; wind is expected to come in at less than $100 a megawatt hour.
The wind farms, operational in 2016, will generate enough electricity to supply 24 per cent of the ACT's electricity in 2020.
Wind farm companies have described the ACT as the only game in town.
Also this month, the ACT government won the prestigious Banksia award for its solar auction. The solar auction funded three solar farms with 20-year feed-in tariffs. Royalla, which opened in September, is the first solar farm in the country to be connected to the national grid. Construction is about to begin on the second solar farm, at Mugga Lane, while the third, at Uriarra, is stalled in planning. Between them, they will produce enough electricity to power 10,000 Canberra homes.
The government also plans to fund a next-generation solar project and small-scale community schemes as part of its roll-out of renewable energy projects, with a target of 90 per cent of the city's energy coming from renewable sources by 2020.
The Banksia award citation said the ACT was the first jurisdiction in Australia to use a reverse auction process to award a large-scale feed-in tariff. As it had never been tried before, it was not without risk, but the government had now created a model for others to follow.
Being host to three of the largest solar power farms in the country underpinned Canberra's emergence as a "renewable energy investment hub", the Banksia citation said.
"ACT's Solar Auction has demonstrated a nation-leading approach to stimulating large-scale renewable energy deployment ... it is fantastic to see local governments such as the ACT with the vision and tenacity to plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 [on 1990 levels] and move towards carbon neutrality by 2060."
