The local Alghanim International has signed two contracts with Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water for two major power plant expansions.

Alghanim signed the contracts with the ministry in mid-June. The local contractor will design, supply and install two 225MW gas turbines at each of the Subiya and Al-Zour South power plants. Siemens will provide the turbines for both projects.

The work is expected to take 18 months to complete. The projects will be built on an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) basis. According to Kuwaiti law, schemes more than 500MW must be tendered as independent power projects (IPPs).

The projects are part of Kuwait’s efforts to boost its generation capacity to cope with its rapidly expanding population.

In January, Kuwait’s Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB) awarded the consortium of UK/French company GDF Suez, Japan’s Sumitomo and Kuwait’s AH Sagar & Brothers Group the contract to build the Al-Zour North independent water and power project (IWPP).

The GDF Suez-led consortium confirmed on 8 January that it had been awarded the contract to build Kuwait’s first IWPP. The PTB selected the winning consortium as the preferred bidder in February last year, but the project stalled when Kuwait’s National Assembly voted to scrap the scheme in June.

The successful consortium had submitted the lowest bid to build the project, with an annual equivalent payment (AEP) value – the yearly payment to the developer over the lifetime of the project – of KD127.1m ($453m).

The winning group will design, finance, build, operate and maintain the 1,500MW plant, which will provide 102-107 million gallons a day of desalinated water. The project is to enter commercial operation by 31 May 2015.