A consortium of Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power and China’s Harbin has submitted the lowest tariff price for the 1,200MW Hassyan coal-fired independent power project (IPP) in Dubai.

The Saudi developer submitted a tariff price 5.177 $cents a kilowatt hour for the 1,200MW project, and also submitted an alternative proposal for a 1,800MW plant with a levelised cost tariff of 4.998 $cents a kilowatt hour. The Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) received bids from four bidders on 30 April

The other bidders and tariff prices for the 1,200MW capacity plant are:

• Kepco (South Korea): 5.998 $cents a kilowatt hour
• TNB Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) (Malaysia): 6.599 $cents a kilowatt hour
• Marubeni (Japan): 7.0128 $cents a kilowatt hour

This is the second time that an Acwa Power consortium has submitted an alternative tariff price for a larger project, with the developer having recently been awarded a contract to develop the second phase of Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum Solar Park as a 200MW IPP instead of the originally tendered 100MW project.

In September, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) received proposals from the four bidders for the 1,200MW coal-fired plant on 30 April. The utility prequalified eight consortiums to bid for the IPP scheme. The utility had received 17 prequalification entries in May, despite much early scepticism within the international power sector on the feasibility of coal-fired power generation in Dubai.

The UK’s EY was appointed as adviser for the coal project in February 2014.

Dubai has set a commissioning date of March 2020 for the first 600MW unit of the coal plant, with the second coming onstream a year later.

Dewa is also pushing ahead with the second and third phases of its Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum Solar Park as an IPP.

In January, the utility doubled the capacity of the second phase of the solar park to 200MW, and selected a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power to develop the IPP. The project is scheduled to be operational by 2017.