Spain’s Duro Felguera has been awarded the contract to build the expansion of the Jebel Ali K Station power plant in Dubai.

MEED reported in April that the contractor had been selected for the main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to expand the K-Station facility, which is expected to increase the capacity by about 500MW. According to sources close to the scheme, the contractor has now signed the contract and is due to start work imminently.

MEED reported in September that 12 groups had submitted prices for the EPC tender. Duro Felguera had initially submitted the fourth lowest price of AED909.7m ($247.6m) for the expansion scheme.

The lowest initial bid, AED788.9m ($215m), had been submitted by Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas. This was about 8.6 per cent lower than the AED863.2m price submitted by the second-lowest bidder, China’s Sepco 3.

A consortium of Spain’s OHL and Italy’s Ansaldo submitted the third-lowest price of AED896.9m.

According to sources close to the project, Duro Felguera and OHL/Ansaldo had been asked to submit new bids in early March, and Duro Felguera has been selected to carry out the work.

MEED first reported in April 2015 that Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) had issued a tender for the technical and economic feasibility study for the third-phase expansion. The K Station plant has a capacity of 880MW and 60 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD) of desalinated water.