Five bidders to compete in final phase of Uzbekistan’s 200 MW PV tender

Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Energy has published a list of the five bidders that were admitted to the final phase of the tender launched in February for a 200 MW solar project in Sherabad, in the southeastern region of Surkhandarya. In December, the ministry said it had pre-qualified 11 bidders for the procurement exercise's final phase.

The final-phase list comprises Chinese solar developer Jinko Power; UAE-based Masdar; Saudi Arabian utility ACWA Power; Chinese module manufacturer Risen; and France's Total Eren.

The bidders who have fallen by the wayside since December are Chinese inverter maker and solar developer TBEA Xinjiang Sunoasis; Japan’s Marubeni; Indian utility NTPC; compatriot developer ReNew Power Private Ltd; South Korea’s utility Kepco, in partnership with Samsung; and Norwegian solar developer Scatec.

The Uzbek government had pre-qualified 54 bidders for the tender in March. “The project capacity is a minimum of 200MW,” Olivier Kueny, Senior PPP Specialist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), told pv magazine. “We innovated on this tender by allowing bidders to optimize their bids by not capping the capacity for them to use fully the 600ha of land available.”

The exercise is being carried out with the support of the ADB. It is part of the 1 GW solar program developed by the government and the lender. Other tenders, for 900 MW of PV capacity are being held with the support of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) private sector arm of the World Bank.

According to the latest statistics from the International Renewable Energy Agency, the country had an installed solar power generation capacity of only 4 MW at the end of 2020.

*The article was updated on April 19 to add the statement from Olivier Kueny, the Senior PPP Specialist at the Asian Development Bank.