The Renewable Energy Project Development Office (REPDO), of the Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources (MEIM) in Saudi Arabia, hosted representatives of pre-qualified companies for a bidders’ conference and an exclusive visit to the Kingdom’s first utility scale Solar PV power plant site. The attendees comprised of representatives from the 27 shortlisted bidders, for the 300MW Sakaka solar PV plant. The requests for proposals (RFP) phase was launched by His Excellency Khalid Al Falih, the Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources on April 17.

The conference gave bidders the opportunity to address the REPDO team directly with questions and queries related to the RFP. The meeting took place at the Marriott Hotel in Riyadh. Bidders were then given the chance to visit and assess the site selected for the Sakaka solar plant.

“Openness and transparency are key pillars of the National Renewable Energy Program. Therefore, offering bidders a chance to engage closely with us and spend time understanding the site we have identified for our first utility scale renewable energy plant, is incredibly important,” said Turki Al Shehri, Head of the Renewable Energy Project Development Office.

“This conference represented yet another important step towards our long-term goals, to rapidly diversify the domestic power mix by scaling up renewable energy contribution to 10 percent of generation capacity,” continued Al Shehri. “We look forward to receiving competitive bids from the market in due course.”

Saudi Arabia’s first ever utility scale Solar PV power plant will be the first of 60 greenfield projects tendered over the course of the next seven years as Saudi Arabia pursues a target of 9.5GW of renewables by 2023 in line with Vision 2030. The close out date for receiving Sakaka Solar PV RFP submissions will be in September, 2017. The announcement of the winning bid will follow in November 2017.

The Sakaka Solar PV project will be backed by a 25-year power purchase agreement, and bidders are required to meet local content targets as outlined in the RFP of this 100 percent private IPP program.