Egypt’s Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) has opened bids from five groups vying to develop the 200MW Kom Ombo solar plant in Upper Egypt.

The client received bids from the five developers on 1 August for the planned photovoltaic (PV) solar scheme.

The lowest proposals were submitted by Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power, which submitted two offers. The bids of 2.752 $cents a kilowatt hour ($c/kWh) and 2.7499 $c/kWh were both lower than any of the other bids.

The second lowest proposal of 2.79117$c/kWh was submitted by Spain’s FRV, which is fully owned by Saudi Arabia’s Abdul Latif Jameel.

Norway’s Scatec submitted a bid of 3.0450$c/kWh, with France’s EDF entering a price of 3.15$c/kWh. A consortium of France’s Engie and the local Orascom submitted a proposal of 3.4$c/kWh, with an alternative offer of 3.007$c/kWh.

The UK’s Actis Power submitted a bid of 3.51736$c/kWh.

The tender for the Kom Ombo project has been delayed a number of times, with bids having been initially invited for submission in June 2016.

Prior to the launch of the 200MW tender in 2016, the Kom Ombo project had been planned as 10 separate 20MW PV projects, with Egypt’s New & Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) having prequalified groups in 2014.

The Kom Ombo is one of a number of large PV solar projects that NREA is planning to develop under the independent power producer (IPP) model.

MEED recently reported that EETC had received prequalification entries from 18 prospective bidders for its planned 600MW PV solar plant in the West of Nile area.

Egypt has set targets for renewable energy to contribute 20 and 35 per cent of total energy produced by 2022 and 2035 respectively.