An invitation for expression of interest (EOI) floated by the Lebanese government has gathered huge interest from solar project developers. The Lebanese Centre for Energy Conservation (LCEC)’s EoI invitation for the development of 300 MW of grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) projects with battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Lebanon has been oversubscribed by 25 times.

In all, a total of 75 EOIs were received, informed Mercom’s source at LCEC. The source further said, “Almost all submitted EOI’s have a proposed capacity of 100 MW plus 75 MW/75 MWh of storage. EOI’s had to abide by the requested capacity.”

Mercom’s source also informed about the intricacies and timeline of this tender which are as follows:

• The purpose of an EoI as used in this process is to understand the appetite of the market to participate in the calls for proposals by the private sector. The EoI process does not include any type of pass/fail evaluation.
• Following the EoI phase, a detailed call for proposals will be circulated to the consortiums that had submitted an EoI. This is expected around December 2018.
• The whole process is managed by the Ministry of Energy and Water as per the decisions of Lebanon’s council of ministers. LCEC is the technical arm of the ministry in that process.
• The evaluation will be done by a national committee to be assigned by the Minister of Energy and Water.
• A detailed discussion will take place at the International Beirut Energy Forum 2018 to shape the request for proposals documents. The purpose of the session would be to shape the request for proposal (RFP) in a way that is bankable and technically feasible.
• Presently, there are no subsidies by the government.

When asked about the names of the EoI submitters, Mercom’s source at LCEC replied, “The list of EOI’s will be available once all reviews are finalized, hopefully in the next month or so.”

In April 2018, LCEC issued a notice inviting EOI for the development of 300 MW of grid-connected solar PV projects with BESS in Lebanon.