Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) has received bids for the contract to expand its M Station power plant at Jebel Ali.

Firms submitted bids on 15 October for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal, which will involve expanding the existing 2,030MW facility by 600MW.

About 19 companies were understood to have picked up tender documents, but it is unclear at this stage how many submitted prices.

The contract is one of 1,900MW-worth of power generation projects for which Dewa has issued tender documents in 2014.

The utility has also issued tender documents in recent months for both the 100MW second phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum Solar Park independent power project (IPP) and the 1,200MW Hassyan clean-coal fired IPP.

Dewa has invited 24 prequalified firms to submit bids for the contract to develop the second phase of the solar park. The utility has set a bid submission date of 23 October.

The Netherlands’ KPMG has been appointed as financial adviser and the UK’s Norton Rose Fulbright has been chosen as legal adviser for the planned solar project, which will utilise photovoltaic (PV) technology. The scheme is scheduled to be fully operational in 2017.

Dewa has invited eight groups to submit proposals by 26 January for the Hassyan IPP. In February, the authority appointed a consortium led by the UK’s EY as adviser for the scheme. Dubai has set a commissioning date of 2020 for the coal plant.

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