Kuwait suffered a power shortage on 27 May as a result of a failure at the Subiya power station, according to sources active in the country’s electricity sector.

MEED understands that a failure at the Subiya plant resulted in interruptions in the country’s electricity supply. This is the second time that a problem at the Subiya plant has reportedly caused interruptions, with a failure in February also resulting in a supply issue.

Earlier in May, MEW awarded the local Alghanim International General Trading & Contracting Company a KD104.9m contract to install and maintain new gas turbine units for the Subiya plant.

Kuwait is facing a race to install new capacity to keep up with the growing demand, which is being driven by rapid population growth and industrial growth. MEW estimates that an additional 10.5GW of new capacity will be required by 2022 to meet expected demand.

In the first quarter of 2015, developers were invited to submit prequalification entries for the country’s next IWPPs, Al-Zour North 2 and Al-Khiran 1.

MEED was unable to obtain a comment from MEW regarding the outage as of 1 June.