The local FAS Energy, a subsidiary of Fawaz al-Hokair Group, and the local Amwal al-Khaleej is planning to develop 150MW of solar rooftop capacity across the kingdom.

The captive solar power facilities are planned to be developed on 19 sites across nine cities in the kingdom, with aggregate capacity set to surpass 150MW.

The developer consortium will develop the capacity under a long-term concession agreement, and is expected to be a trailblazer project for distributed solar schemes in Saudi Arabia.

The developer has appointed India/US’ Synergy Consulting as lead financial adviser, Germany’s Fichtner as the technical adviser and the UK’s DLA Piper as legal adviser.

The prequalification process has already started for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts, with the developer targeting to begin the request for proposal (RFP) process before the end of November. According to media reports, more than 30 contractors have expressed interest in the scheme.

Saudi Arabia is also currently undertaking a major programme to develop utility-scale renewable energy projects to feed electricity into the national grid. In September, the Renewable Energy Project Development Office (Repdo), the body established by the Ministry of Energy, Industry & Mineral Resources to oversee the government’s renewable energy programme, received a world record lowest tariff for the first project.