Sri Lanka issues tender for 90 MW of solar

The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) is tendering 90 PV power plants with a capacity of 1 MW each. The deadline to submit project proposals is March 23, 2018.

January 26, 2018 Emiliano Bellini

Sri Lanka is currently supporting solar through the program PV ‘Soorya Bala Sangramaya’.

Image: Dhammika Heenpella/Flickr

Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), which is Sri Lanka’s largest electricity provider, has issued a new tender for 90 MW of solar power.

The utility is tendering 90 PV power projects with a capacity of 1 MW each, all of which must be developed on a Build, Own & Operate (BOO) basis. They will be connected to 18 different grid substations across different regions in the country.

Selected projects will be awarded a 20-year PPA with CEB. There will be no restriction on the number of proposals that can be submitted by a single project proponent. Selected developers will have to procure or lease land with an area of at least 3 acres for each project. The deadline for the submission of project proposals is March 23, 2018. The tender’s ceiling price has been set at 18.37 LKR ($0.119) /kWh.

A similar tender with the same ceiling price was issued by CEB in April. At the time, the utility tendered sixty 1 MW PV plants. Another tender, this time for a larger project of 10 MW, was launched by CEB last summer.

Both tenders are part of the second phase of the ‘Soorya Bala Sangramaya’ program (Battle for Solar Energy). The country’s government expects to add 200 MW of solar electricity to the national grid by 2020, and 1 GW by 2025, under this program.

According to a joint study by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Asian Development Bank (ADB), Sri Lanka has the potential to deploy 16 GW of solar power and cover its power demand entirely with renewables by 2050.

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