Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah City for Atomic & Renewable Energy (KA-Care) has received bids from firms for the technical, financial and legal consultancy roles on the kingdom’s planned renewable energy programme.

MEED reported in July that KA-Care had issued tender documents for technical, financial and legal consultants to advise on the major new renewables programme. According to sources close to the programme, KA-Care has received bids and is currently evaluating the proposals.

The tender of the consultancy contracts follows on from the for EOIs for the solar schemes follows the launch of the kingdom’s Vision 2030 in April, which set out an initial target for 3.5GW of renewable energy by 2020. 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 KA-Care having failed to deliver on its initial 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.

While KA-Care has initiated the process to select advisers for its renewables energy programme, state utility Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) is pushing ahead with plans for the kingdom’s first major standalone renewable energy schemes.

Developers submitted prequalification proposals on 4 August for the contracts 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 aiming to issue tender documents to prequalified groups on 20 October, with a bid submission date likely in January 2017. The client is aiming to sign the power purchase agreement (PPA) and reach financial close by the end of May 2017.

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.