Jordan’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (MEMR) has extended the deadline for companies to submit expressions of interest for the third round of its direct proposal renewable energy programme.

MEMR has extended the deadline from 15 May to 14 August to submit interest in the third round, which has been implemented to encourage more companies to participate in the programme, according to sources close to the programme.

MEMR recently prequalified a total of 47 expressions of interest, 24 of those conditionally, for solar schemes and six firms, two of those conditionally, for wind energy projects for the second stage of the renewable energy direct proposal programme.

Under the direct proposal programme, applicants, which can be single companies or joint ventures, submit proposals for the wind and solar projects, which will be implemented on a build-own-operate (BOO) basis. Applicants selected by the government will receive a memorandum of understanding (MoU), which will allow them to proceed with feasibility studies and measurement programmes.

For the third round, MEMR has increased the capacity of solar projects to 100MW, an increase from the maximum 50MW for solar photovoltaic (PV) projects and 50-100MW for wind-power schemes in the second round.

MEMR began its direct proposal programme for renewable projects in May 2011, when it invited expressions of interest for the first round. After receiving 64 expressions of interest for the first stage, a shortlist of 34 companies and consortiums were compiled. After that, a total of 30 MoUs were signed calling for a total of 850MW solar and wind power projects.

From this list, 15 PV, two concentrating PV and five concentrated solar power (CSP) projects, were initially qualified. Eventually, 12 PV schemes with an aggregate capacity of 170MW were ultimately approved.

The direct proposal programme has suffered from slow progress to date. Despite a deadline of the end of 2013 for all of the first round projects to be signed off, the first power purchase agreement (PPA) was only signed off in the first week of 2014, for a 1MW PV solar plant for the Maan Development Company.