Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) has extended the bid submission date for the contract to develop the Hassyan coal independent power project (IPP) by two months to 26 March 2015.

This is the second time the submission date for the 1,200MW coal IPP has been extended, with the original submission date having been set for 26 November. The extension has been granted to allow bidders more time to work on submissions, according to sources close to the project.

In September, Dewa announced that it had invited eight consortiums to bid for the Hassyan IPP. The utility had received 17 prequalification entries in May.

In February, Dewa appointed a consortium led by the UK’s EY as adviser for the project. Dubai has set a commissioning date of March 2020 for the first 600MW unit in the coal plant, with the second coming onstream 12 months later.

Dewa is also pushing ahead with the 100MW second phase of its Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum Solar Park as an IPP.

On 20 November, Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power International submitted the lowest tariff price for Dubai’s 100MW photovoltaic (PV) solar IPP. Dewa received bids from 10 of the 24 prequalified consortiums for the solar project.

Acwa Power submitted the low tariff of 5.98 cents a kilowatt hour (kWh), which was 2.5 per cent lower than the second-lowest bid of 6.13 cents a kWh submitted by a consortium of Spain’s Fotowatio Renewables and Saudi Arabia’s Abdul Latif Jameel.

MEED reported in March that Dewa had appointed the Netherlands’ KPMG as financial adviser and the UK’s Norton Rose Fulbright as legal adviser for the IPP. Germany’s Lahmeyer International is technical adviser for the scheme.