Saudi Arabia Indexes Bidders for First Solar Power Venture

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, has hoped to expand far from the asset and has focused on creating 3.45 gigawatts of the sustainable power source by 2020.

Saudi Arabia has indexed bids by Acwa Power and a consortium drove by Marubeni to build up the kingdom’s first historically speaking solar power venture as it hopes to create elective wellsprings of vitality and free up oil for sending out. The Renewable Energy Project Development Office (Repdo), set up a year ago to supervise the nation’s renewables program, picked the offers put together by the neighborhood designer and Japanese building firm finished the world’s least expensive offers for a solar undertaking presented by a consortium drove by Abu Dhabi clean energy firm Masdar and its French accomplice EDF.

The Masdar-drove consortium’s offered to for the 300MW Sakaka photovoltaic (PV) venture in the northern Al Jouf district came at 1.79 US pennies for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) and was 24 percent less expensive than that of Riyadh-based Acwa Power, which presented the second-most minimal offer in October.

In a statementRepdo said, “All companies that have submitted bids for R1 [round one] Sakaka PV RFP are invited to participate in future projects of the NREP [National Renewable Energy Programme].”

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, has hoped to expand far from the asset and has focused on creating 3.45 gigawatts of the sustainable power source by 2020 under its National Transformation Program and also creating 9.5GW of sustainable power source limit by 2023.

The PV venture at Sakaka is set to be granted to the chosen bidder this month and will be supported by a 25-year control buy concurrence with the Saudi Power Procurement Company, Repdo included its announcement. Money related conclusion for the venture is normal in February.

Masdar’s bid submitted in October a year ago was set to break the 2 penny edge for a PV venture as duties for such plans keep on falling.

Saudi Arabia’s decision not to run with the most minimal bidder demonstrates that the nation might be “hoping to do things any other way” and organizing quality over cost, says Gus Schellekens, an accomplice at Ernst and Youn

The race to the bottom is a dangerous one as the prices get cheaper and cheaper,” he said. “The projects that are being tendered are massive, around one gigawatt and with the sort of scale, the risks also increase. Saudi Arabia’s move reassured the market (about the pricing) and shows they want to do it differently, that they’re prioritizing quality.”

The dangers to the territorial renewables industry, which presently can’t seem to create economies of scale is that at low taxes “corners could be cut”, said Mr. Schellekens. “For projects of this scale, when things don’t work out, it could be dangerous,” he added.

Source: The National