The world has reached another 'lowest' solar PV tariff at AED 0.0497 ($0.0135) per kWh in a 2 GW solar power tender that was launched by the Emirates Water and Electricity Company (EWEC) in February 2019.
For comparison, it is several notches lower than the $0.0156 per kWh level reached in Qatar tender for a 800 MW solar plant offered by a consortium of Total and Marubeni. It is also lower than the winning bid of €14.76 per MWh in the first solar energy auction in Portugal in summer 2019 anda $0.0242 per kWh lowest tariff offered by a joint venture between ADPower and Marubeni/JinkoSolar for the 1,177 MW Noor Abu Dhabi Solar Power Plant at Sweihan that came online last year.
EWEC's parent company Abu Dhabi Power Corporation (ADPower) announced the record news while informing that it received final offers from 5 bidder consortia out of 24 bidders qualified to submit their proposals. The lowest bid was received from the first ranked bidder without revealing their identities in an official statement.
However, Greentech Media (GTM) claims ADPower has confirmed that the winning consortium comprises France's EDF and China's JinkoSolar and that a 30-year power purchase agreement (PPA) will be negotiated with the winners. In case, the consortia will not agree to the conditions, ADPower will approach the second best bidder.
The duo of EDF and JinkoSolar beat other consortia contenders Marubeni and Total, SoftBank Energy and Eni, as well as individual bidders ACWA Power and Engie.
EWEC CEO Othman Ali said, "Securing such competitive tariffs on our energy projects is fundamental to support economic growth across all sectors in the UAE. We look forward to signing the Power Purchase Agreement and to delivering the project in Q2/2022."
Winning consortia will be expected to arrange financing, construct, operate and maintain the Al Dhafra Solar PV project. The 2 GW project will take Abu Dhabi's total solar power generation capacity to around 3.2 GW and is panned to generate enough clean energy to power 160,000 households across the UAE.
In January 2020, media reports suggested EWEC is on the lookout for a suitable location to host another large scale solar power plant with 1.5 GW capacity, its third solar PV independent power producer (IPP) project (see Abu Dhabi Planning 1.5 GW Solar PV Tender).