Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) has extended the bid deadline for contractors to submit bids for the deal to expand its M Station power plant at Jebel Ali.

Firms now have until 15 September to submit bids for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract, which will involve expanding the existing 2,030MW facility by 600MW. The original submission date was 12 August.

The deal is one of 1,300MW-worth of power generation projects for which Dewa is planning to sign agreements by the end of 2014.

The authority is also planning to sign the power purchase agreements (PPAs) for both the 100MW second phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum Solar Park independent power project (IPP) and the proposed 600MW first phase of its 1,200MW Hassyan clean-coal fired IPP by the end of 2014, Dewa told MEED in March.

In February, Dewa appointed a consortium led by the UK’s EY as adviser for the Hassyan IPP. The clean-coal scheme will be carried out in two 600MW phases, with the first phase set to be commissioned in the second quarter of 2020 and the second phase in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Dewa.

In March, MEED reported that Dewa had appointed financial and legal advisers for the second phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum Solar Park IPP. The Netherlands’ KPMG has been appointed as financial adviser and the UK’s Norton Rose Fulbright as legal adviser for the planned solar scheme, which will utilise photovoltaic (PV) technology. The project is scheduled to be fully operational in 2017.

While Dubai has installed capacity of 9,700MW and was easily able to cope with the 6,500MW peak demand recorded in 2013, Dewa is pressing ahead with plans to boost the emirate’s capacity. Power consumption is expected to grow by 4.5-5 per cent a year up to the 2020 opening of the World Expo in Dubai.