Tunisia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy has extended the deadline for project proposals for a 70MW solar tender by two months, from 15 August to 18 October 2018.
The tender was initially announced at the end of May and concerns six projects of 10MW capacity and another 10 of 1MW, reports PV Magazine.
It is the second round of calls for PV projects of this kind, termed a Regime Authorizations tender.
Competing bidders are expected to offer the most attractively priced 20-year Power Purchase Agreement as the north African does not operate on the feed-in tariff scheme.
According to the media, an additional ‘Regime Concessions’ tender of 500MW is at the pre-qualification phase and regards PV projects on five sites, each with a capacity of between 50 and 200MW.
Successful proposals in both tenders translate into projects that need to be developed under the build, own, operate model by which the owners of PV farms will sell the electricity generated to Tunisia’s state-owned Société Tunisienne de l’Electricité et du Gaz utility, under 20-year PPA.
Increasing share of renewables
With effect from 2014 to 2019, the government of Tunisia targets to diversify the share of the country’s electricity generation with renewables from 0.8% to 4.3%.
This is planned to be achieved through the Tunisian Solar Plan, a Public-Private Partnership. Read more: Tunisia to boost its economy and shift to green energy
Under the Tunisian Solar Plan, the country targets to add 3.8 GW of renewable energy by 2030.
According to GIZ, Tunisia has so far installed a total of 35MW of solar PV.
At present, Tunisia meets around 97% of its electricity needs from gas and oil.
TunisianMonitorOnline (esi-africa)
