Indonesia’s state-owned public utility, Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), has invited bids from developers for solar and bioenergy (biomass and biogas) projects in the country.

The bidders will have to meet the pre-qualification criteria to participate in the bidding process. Bidders  should be from Indonesia or any country with diplomatic relations with Indonesia.

Interested bidders will have to pay a registration amount of Rp 2.5 million (~$176) to participate in the tender. No deadline  for submitting bids has been mentioned.  According to the announcement,  PLN will regularly carry out the evaluation process.

The  bidder should have successfully executed at least one independent project, engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract, or an operation & maintenance (O&M) contract in the last ten years. The project should have been in successful operation for at least one year.

Regarding the financial criteria, the interested parties will have to prepare their financial credit ratings report from S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s, or Fitch. The invitation issued to the successful bidders will be valid for three years for solar and bioenergy projects.

Recently,  the Asian Development Bank approved a $600 million loan to help PLN expand electricity access, and promote renewable energy in eastern Indonesia. The second phase of the Sustainable Energy Access in Eastern-Indonesia Electricity Grid Development Program supports PLN’s efforts to expand electricity access and improve service reliability in nine provinces in Kalimantan’s outer regions Maluku, and Papua in eastern Indonesia. ADB has also approved a loan of $300 million (~₹22.4 billion) to help PT Geo Dipa Energy (GDE), an Indonesian state-owned company, to expand its geothermal base by 110 MW in Java, an island of Indonesia.

In October this year, the Indonesian Government announced that it was set to introduce regulations  to simplify renewable energy tariffs, which would encourage greater investment in the sector. The country has set out to achieve 23% renewable energy use by 2025 and 31% by 2050. The government currently forecasts only 2.5 GW of additional renewable power capacity by 2025 while the need is for round 10 GW between 2019-2025 to reach the energy mix target.

Previously, Mercom reported that Masdar (or the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company) signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with PLN for a 145 MW floating solar project, the first of its kind in the country.