The Rural Areas Electricity Company (Tanweer), based in Oman has floated a tender for 146 MW of solar, diesel and storage hybrid projects to be developed at 11 sites.

These sites are – Madha, Masrooq, Mittan, Al Mazyunah, Farshat Qatbeet, Al Hallaniyat, Hasik, Hitam, Al Khadrah, Al Khuwaimah, and Masirah in the Sultanate of Oman.

The bid closing date is September 19, 2019.

An Expression of Interest (EoI) was released by Tanweer seeking bidders in June 2018. Tanweer is the only company in the electricity sector in Oman undertaking five licenses; Generation, Transmission, Distributes, supplies electricity to customers and Desalinated activities. Tanweer is wholly owned by the electricity holding company Nama Group, which is also owned by the Ministry of Finance.

The project capacity requirements include for 48 MW of solar, 70 MW diesel generator and 28 MW of battery energy storage system.

The scope of work states that the successful bidder should undertake the responsibilities of developing the hybrid power projects under the build-own-operate-transfer(BOOT) model.  The scope of work includes the development of two greenfield diesel generation power projects at Madha and Mittan and the replacement and addition of a new diesel generator. The work further consists of developing photovoltaic (PV) power projects and battery energy storage system (BESS) at all the sites.

The initial power purchase agreement (PPA) term is for 15 years.

According to the company, the development of all 11 sites will be given to a single applicant, and the prequalified applicants must submit their bids for all the sites. However, the bidders will not be allowed to select individual sites and opt out of others.

The minimum eligibility requirements state that the interested bidder should have a minimum net worth of $30 million in each of the three fiscal years. The bidder must also have a strong track record of successfully developing large scale solar PV projects and should have handled a single project of at least 16.5 MW. The bidder must demonstrate experience in undertaking independent power producer (IPP) projects with an aggregate capacity of over 120 MW in the Middle East region.

Moreover, an interested bidder should have a track record of successfully undertaking hybrid power systems comprising solar PV and diesel generator sets for an aggregate capacity of at least 5 MW.

The announcement also states that the bidder should have handled solar power projects either through IPP, engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) or operations and maintenance (O&M) basis for an aggregate capacity of 60 MW.

Similarly, the bidder should have an experience of undertaking diesel-generator projects either through IPP, EPC, or O&M basis for an aggregate capacity of over 10 MW.

In July 2019, Mercom had reported about Oman Power and Water Procurement Company’s Request for Selection (RfS) for developing two utility-scale solar PV projects at Manah.

Mercom also reported recently that a consortium of Kuwait and Saudi Arabian companies won the bid to develop 500 MW of large utility-scale solar independent power projects located at Ibri in Oman, built at an approximate value of $400 million.

Image Credit: IBC Solar