Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Energy (MoE) issued a list of prequalified bidders for two solar projects, namely the Sherabad Solar Public-Private Partnership Project and Scaling Solar 2 Project.

In July this year, the Uzbekistan Government had announced tenders for solar projects with a cumulative capacity of 1.4 GW. The government had announced the tenders intending to attract qualified private developers-investors for the projects under its new Public-Private Partnership law.

Under the first tender, 1 GW of solar projects would be developed with the Asian Development Bank’s support. A site located in the Sherabad district of the Surkhandarya region had been selected to construct the project. Under the second tender, 400 MW of projects are slated to be developed. Sites situated in the Gallaorol district of the Jizzakh region and the Kattakurgan district of the Samarkand region have been selected for the construction of the projects. These projects will be developed with the assistance of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the financial arm of the World Bank.

The MoE had sent a request for qualifications (RfQ) to potential bidders for both the projects on June 26, 2020. The deadline to submit the bids was September 26, 2020.

The tender commission for the projects includes the representatives from the MoE, the Ministry of Investments and Foreign Trade (MIFT), JSC National Electric Networks of Uzbekistan (NENU), and the Ministry of Finance (MoF). The prequalified bidders for the Sherabad project are:

Indian energy conglomerate NTPC and ReNew Power have made the cut.

Similarly, these are the prequalified bidders for the Scaling Solar project:

In February this year, the Uzbek MoE had invited expression of interest (EoI) from international investors to develop nearly 400 MW of solar independent power producer projects in the regions of Samarkand and Jizzakh. Each solar project will have a capacity of approximately 200 MW.

Last year, Masdar (or Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company) had announced that it had won the bid to develop Uzbekistan’s first public- PPP solar project under the International Finance Corporation’s Scaling Solar program. Masdar will develop a 100 MW utility-scale solar project, which will be located in Uzbekistan’s Navoi region.

Despite having significant solar potential, Uzbekistan is highly dependent on natural gas for its electricity generation. The country is in the process of implementing an ambitious renewable energy strategy to deploy 5 GW of solar capacity in the next ten years.

Image Credit: BLM