Oman begins process for second 500 MW PV tender

The Oman Power and Water Procurement company (OPWP) has issued a Request for Proposals to select consultancy service providers for the development of its second large-scale solar park. Interested consultants will have time until October 15, 2018, to submit their offers.

“In line with Oman’s vision to diversify fuel sources for power generation and following the ongoing procurement of the first large utility scale solar PV IPP in Oman, OPWP would now like to initiate the process for the second utility scale solar project to be connected to the Main Interconnected System in Oman, with a capacity between 500 MW to 1000 MW, known as Solar 2022 IPP (Project),” the OPWP specified in the document.

In July, the utility announced its intention to initiate the project for this second large solar park in the second quarter of this year.

The new project, together with another of the same size, tendered in January 2018, is part of the country’s strategy to install around 2 GW of solar power by 2024. Two more similar tenders are planned to be held in 2019 and 2020, respectively, in order to achieve this goal.

As for the first 500 MW PV tender, the OPWP revealed in April that it had pre-qualified 12 developers, while the list of all 28 applicants was released in early March. The US$500 million solar PV park will be developed as an independent power project (IPP), and will be located in Ibri, around 300 km west of Muscat.

In January of last year, another tender to select developers interested in building a 100 MW (AC) PV plant in Amin, in the southern desert region of the Sultanate of Oman, was issued by Oman’s Petroleum Development Oman LLC (PDO).

POD is 60% owned by the government of Oman, while the Shell Group and French oil giant, Total have a stake of 34% and 4%, respectively. The remaining share of 2% is held by the Portuguese oil company, Partex.