The Oman Power and Water Procurement (OPWP) Company has invited companies to submit bids for an operations and maintenance (O&M) contract for two solar monitoring sites in Adam and Manah cities.

OPWP has invited contractors to submit bids by 9 April for the O&M contract. The solar data from the monitoring sites is to be made freely available to the public, and is part of OPWP’s aims to procure about 200MW of solar generation for the main interconnected system (MIS) grid by 2018.

Despite having solar density levels, Oman has fallen behind many of its GCC neighbours in making a move with renewable energy. Oman only began seriously looking at alternative energy in 2008, when the Authority for Electricity Regulation (AER) published a renewable energy study.

Muscat has an increasingly strong incentive to pursue renewable energy in the coming years, with peak power demand growth forecast to grow at average annual rate of 11 per cent until 2020. At the same time, Oman is facing an increasingly tight gas market, which has forced it to limit liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports and assess alternative power generation production.

Contractors were recently invited to submit bids for the contract to supply and install up to 25 wind turbines with a capacity of 50MW at Harweel Wind Farm in the southern Dhofar region. Abu Dhabi’s Masdar is providing funding for the $200m project, in cooperation with Oman’s Rural Areas Electricity Company (Raeco). Raeco will take over operations at the wind farm three years after commissioning, which is scheduled for 2017.

In addition to renewable energy, Oman is also reconsidering using coal as a power generation resource, having dropped previous plans to use the fuel in 2010. MEED reported in January that Muscat is carrying out initial inhouse feasibility studies about the possibility of using coal for a major power plant at the town of Duqm as part of efforts to diversify the country’s power generation resources.