Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC) has announced that a total of 23 utility project developers have been prequalified for the fifth round of solar projects coming up across the kingdom with a total 3700 MW capacity.

It is being implemented under the National Renewable Energy Program (NREP) which is led and supervised by the Ministry of Energy, said SPPC in its statement.

The Round 5 Solar Projects comprise the 2000MWac capacity Al Sadawi IPP to be located in the Eastern province; 1000MWac Al Masa’a IPP in Hail province; 400MWac Al Henakiyah 2 IPP in Madinah province and 300MWac Rabigh 2 IPP in the Makkah Province.

The list of the pre-qualified bidders include global players such as French utility majors EDF and Total Energies; Japanese heavyweights Marubeni, Sumitomo, Itochu and Jera and Korean construction giants Samsung C&T Corporation and Korea Electric Power Corporation in addition to Greek builder GEK Terna; leading Thai companies

B. Grimm Power and Gulf Energy Development Public Company as well as Chinese groups Power Construction Corporation of China, Spic Huanghe Hydropower Development and Jinko Power (Hong Kong).

The major regional firms which have now made it to the prequalified list include UAE-based Masdar, Kahrabel and BGL Renewable Energy Systems Installation as well as Qatari group Nebras Power.

According to SPPC, of the total 23 companies which had expressed their interests in the Round 5 projects, five were Saudi firms namely Al Jomaih Energy & Water Company; Alfanar; Saudi Electricity Company; FAS Energy and Nesma Renewable Energy.

These projects are part of NREP, which aims to achieve the optimal energy mix, displacing liquid fuels in the Kingdom’s power sector and supply 50% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030.

SPPC said under the NREP scheme, it will be responsible for the predevelopment, tendering and subsequently offtaking the energy from the projects. To date, SPPC has awarded over 12.6 GW of renewable energy capacity under NREP.

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