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Several Shortlisted Bids in $0.01 Range in Saudi Tender

REPDO says the Saudi Arabia Round 2 solar tender capacity will need to use 17% of local content. Power generated by the facilities will be purchased by SPPC as the offtaker under 25-year agreement.

Anu Bhambhani
  • REPDO in Saudi Arabia has released a list of shortlisted bidders for all the solar PV projects tendered under two categories with 1.47 GW cumulative capacity
  • First Solar and Al Blagha led consortia are bidding for both 50 MW and 20 MW projects under category A projects
  • Category B projects has 4 projects out of which for the 600 MW project bids from ACWA Power and Masdar led consortia were discovered to be extremely close

The Saudi Arabian Renewable Energy Project Development Office (REPDO) has announced shortlisted bidders for the 1.47 GW solar power tenders it launched in 2019. In February 2020, local news reports listed some of the world's biggest names making a beeline for the tender (see Biggies Line Up For Saudi Arabia's Solar Tender).

Now the agency has specified the names and bids offered by shortlisted companies for the capacity divided into two categories for round 2 of the National Renewable Energy Program (NREP), as below:

Category A projects

Two projects are included in this category, 50 MW Madinah PV IPP and 20 MW Rafha PV IPP. REPDO received 2 bids for each of the 2 projects from Al Blagha Holding led consortia and US based module manufacturer First Solar led consortia.

For the 50 MW project, Al Blagha has quoted SAR 0.07275 ($0.019) per kWh and First Solar have quoted SAR 0.01135 ($0.0030) per kWh. For the 20 MW project, the 2 consortia have quoted SAR 0.01307 ($0.0035) per kWh and SAR 0.01904 ($0.0051) per kWh, respectively.

Category B projects

In this category come 4 large scale solar power projects for which the REPDO received 4 bids in total for each of the 4 projects. For the 600 MW Al-Faisaliah PV IPP project, REPDO says bids from lowest 2 bidders were extremely close and the difference in levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) was within statistical margin of error.

Therefore, for the 600 MW project REPDO decided to shortlist the 2 consortia led by Masdar and ACWA Power and proceed with a best and final offer (BAFO). Final results of this bid will be announced in April 2020 after completion of BAFO.

For the 300 MW Jeddah PV IPP project, the consortia of Masdar/EDF Renouvelables/Nesma Holding have offered a bid of SAR 0.06090 ($0.016) per kWh, while the other shortlisted bidder consortia of ACWA Power/Gulf Investment Corporation/Al-Babtain Contracting have offered a bid of SAR 0.06215 ($0.017) per kWh.

The 300 MW Rabigh PV IPP project has Marubeni/Al Jomaih Energy & Water Company bidding with SAR 0.06381 ($0.017) per kWh and ACWA Power/Gulf Investment Corporation/Al-Babtain bidding for SAR 0.06597 ($0.018) per kWh.

For 200 MW Quarrayat PV IPP, ACWA Power/Gulf Investment Corporation/Al-Babtain has been shortlisted for SAR 0.06688 ($0.018) per kWh and Total Solar/Al Gihaz Holding/Altaaqa Alternative Solutions have offered to build it for SAR 0.06785 ($0.018) per kWh.

Both the categories stipulate use of 17% local content in the projects. Winners for all these projects will enter into a 25-year power purchase agreement with the Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC) as the offtaker.