OSLO, March 19 (Reuters) - Norway's first auction for the right to build a commercial offshore wind farm in the North Sea will continue on Wednesday, the energy ministry said on Tuesday evening.

The auction to build up to 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity some 200 kilometres (124 miles) from the Norwegian shore, and close to maritime border with Denmark, was launched on Monday and continued through Tuesday.

"The auction has continued throughout the day and has taken a break. The auction will start again at 0900 (0800 GMT) tomorrow, Wednesday," the ministry said in an update.

Five groups pre-qualified for the auction in February but Germany's EnBW has since confirmed that it would not participate.

The remaining four groups were:

* Norway's Equinor and Germany's RWE

* State-owned utility Statkraft, Aker Offshore Wind and Britain's BP

* Ventyr, consisting of Parkwind, majority owned by Japan's Jera, and Ingka Group, the owner of most IKEA stores

* Shell and local Norwegian firms Lyse and Eviny

The descending-bids auction offers state support through a 15-year contract for difference (CfD) nominated in Norwegian oere per kilowatt hour (kWh), and capped at a total of 23 billion Norwegian crowns ($2.17 billion).

The offshore wind industry is struggling with cost increases from rising interest rates and supply chain bottlenecks. Big names such as Orsted, Vattenfall, TotalEnergies and Iberdrola dropped plans to participate in the auction.

Norway aims to have 30 GW of offshore wind capacity installed by 2040.

($1 = 10.6081 Norwegian crowns)

(Reporting by Nora Buli and Nerijus Adomaitis Editing by Mark Potter)