Oman seeks to further implement rooftop PV plan

Oman’s Authority for Electricity Regulation (AER) has issued an expression of interest (EoI) to select qualified entities for the supply of an operating and integrated system of automated risk management that will be used to perform operational management and risk mitigation for the second phase of the rooftop PV program, Sahim.

The selected provider will be responsible for procuring, funding, installing, commissioning, operating and maintaining the integrated system for Sahim 2 for a period of not less than 20 years, the authority said in the document. Applications should be sent by June 6, 2018.

The Sahim initiative was launched by the AER last May. Phase one of the program, Sahim I, already commenced in March. It aims to deploy 1 GW of rooftop PV power and to install solar PV arrays on 30% of the Sultanate’s residential buildings over the next years. This phase allows larger households and businesses that install rooftop PV solar systems at their own cost to be compensated for PV electricity exported to a licensed system at the relevant approved Bulk Supply Tariff.

Phase 2 of the program, the aforementioned Sahim 2, aims to support the wide-scale deployment of residential PV systems ranging in size from 3 kW to 5 kW. “Unlike Sahim 1, the costs of procuring, installing, operating and maintaining Sahim 2 residential PV systems will  not be met by customers but will be met by private sector entities who will recover related costs through contracts with licensed suppliers,” the AER said in a document released.

A study published by Oman‘s Public Authority for Electricity and Water (PAEW) in 2015, estimated that rooftop PV systems installed across the country could potentially generate 1.4 GW of renewable energy. In the capital of Muscat alone, the generated power capacity could reach 450 MW, the study showed.

Oman is also supporting large-scale solar through a 500 MW tender, which is currently at the pre-qualification stage.