Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) has invited companies to submit expressions of interest (EOI) for the country’s first major standalone renewable energy projects.

Developers have been invited to submit expressions of interest (EOIs) by 20 June for the schemes to develop 50MW photovoltaic (PV) solar plants at Al-Jouf and Rafha in the northern part of the kingdom. The projects will be developed under the independent power project (IPP) model),with SEC set to be the offtaker for all of the power produced from the plants.

SEC is intending to issue a request for qualifications (RFQs) to developers by 14 July.

The UK’s HSBC has been appointed as financial consultant, with the UK’s DLA Piper as legal consultant and the Netherland’s DNV as technical consultant.

MEED reported in February that SEC had received bids from consultants for the solar schemes at Al-Jouf and Rafha, and also for a 10-50MW wind project at Umiju.

The utility received bids from firms for the technical consultancy role on three major renewables projects on 15 February. The deadline had been extended from the initial submission date of 31 January.

The invitation for EOIs for the solar schemes follows the launch of the kingdom’s Vision 2030 in April, which set out an initial target for 9.5GW of renewable energy, believed to be by 2022. The new economic plan also revealed that Riyadh was in the process of forming a new King Salman Renewable Energy Initiative.

The initiation of the procurement phase for the first renewables projects will be welcomed throughout the international renewable energy market, with the kingdom having failed to deliver on the ambitious 54GW renewables programme it launched in 2013.

Following the release of a white paper outlining the initial phases of schemes in February 2013, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-Care) was unable to make any further progress with its programme.

In 2015, SEC made progress with its first renewables projects when it awarded contracts for the Duba 1 and Waad al-Shamal integrated solar combined-cycle (ISCC) projects, which will each have solar components of about 50MW.