Syria’s Public Establishment of Electricity for Generation & Transmission (PEEGT) has selected a UK-based consortium of IPA Energy and Water Economics, Norton Rose and SgurrEnergy to advise on its latest wind farm.

The IPA-led consortium has been notified of its selection and a contract for the award is expected to be signed shortly.

According to a source at PEEGT a total of six bids were submitted and three groups were shortlisted for the consultancy contract. These were the IPA-led group, Germany’s Fichtner and US-headquartered Booz & Company.

The advisers will supervise the bidding process and provide training to PEEGT’s staff for working with the completed project. The exact size of the wind farm will be determined by PEEGT in collaboration with the advisory team, but it will fall in the 50-100MW range.

Two sites have been earmarked as possible locations for the wind farm, either Al-Sukhna, which is 70 kilometres east of Palmyra, or Al-Hijana 50km south of Damascus.

PEEGT has already launched the search for a developer to build the project and it has received a total of 15 responses to a request for qualification (RFQ). According to PEEGT, a request for proposals (RFP) to build the project will be issued soon after the advisers have signed the mandate to work on the project.

The winning bidder will develop the wind farm on a build-own-operate or build-operate-transfer basis. The project company will design, finance, build, own and operate the wind farm for 20-25 years.