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Saudi Arabia has received two bids for solar photovoltaic (PV) power projects totalling 70 megawatts (MW) under Round Two of the Kingdom’s National Renewable Energy Program (NREP), an industry source told Zawya.
The two projects are Rafha (20MW) and Madinah (50MW), the source said.
The source said REPDO has received bids from a consortium of Alfanar Company, Al Blagha Group and DTI (all Saudi companies), and the United States-based First Solar, respectively.
A third bid expected from France-based Akuo Energy was yet to be received, the source added.
The two projects, to be developed using the Independent Power Producer (IPP) model, are Category A smaller capacity projects, according to past statements from the Renewable Energy Project Development Office (REPDO), the agency responsible for the delivery of NREP.
REPDO had issued the Request for Proposals (RFP) for Category A projects on 1 August 2019 with a submission deadline of 3 December 2019, which was extended to 3 February 2020, recent statements from the agency showed. The reasons for the extensions weren’t disclosed.
While the source didn’t elaborate on the “competitive” tariffs submitted for the projects or when the contracts would be awarded, in October 2019, Dubai had received world’s lowest bid of US$1.69 cents per kW/h for 900 MW 5th phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.
In June 2019, REPDO had qualified 60 companies, including 28 from Saudi Arabia to bid for a total of six projects, which includes four large-scale Category B projects, in the second round with a combined capacity of 1.5 gigawatts (GW).
(Writing by Anoop Menon; Editing by Mily Chakrabarty)
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© ZAWYA 2020
