The Sharjah Electricity & Water Authority (Sewa) is holding bid clarification meetings with the eight bidders for the contract to expand and convert the existing Hamriyah power plant to a combined-cycle facility.

The combined-cycle conversion project will boost the capacity of the existing Hamriyah plant by about 750MW.

Sewa received bids from eight groups on the 21 March, and is currently conducting clarification meetings with bidders before selecting a preferred bidder and awarding the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) package.

MEED reported in November last year that the client had invited contractors to submit proposals.

The eight bidding groups are:

•  Calik Enerji (Turkey)
•  Doosan (South Korea)
•  Duro Felguera (Spain)
•  Gama (Turkey)
•  GE (US)
•  OHL (Spain) / Sadelmi Power (Italy)
•  Sepco 3 (China)
•  Siemens (Germany) / Elsewedy Electric (Egypt)

The expansion project had been in the planning stage for some time, but faced some delays as the client sought budgetary approval.

The power plant expansion is part of Sharjah’s plans to boost domestic power capacity to deal with the growing demand for power. The emirate has become increasingly reliant on electricity imports from neighbouring Abu Dhabi in recent years.

Sharjah’s electricity imports increased sharply from:

• 184MW in 2008 to 707MW by 2011
• In 2013, Sewa imported 761MW from the UAE capital

Abu Dhabi stepped up its electricity exports to Sewa in 2011 following Sharjah suffering from some of the worst power cuts in the Gulf in 2009 and 2010.

Sharjah has struggled to get its own power proejcts off the ground in recent years. Sewa’s last major tender came in July 2008, when it issued a letter of intent to a consortium of the US’ GE and Canada’s SNC Lavalin to build a 1,900MW plant at Hamriya. However, the contract was never signed and the project failed to proceed.

The emirate is also looking at alternative ways to produce electricity. In May 2014, Sharjah awarded a $505m contract to the UK’s Chinook Sciences to build one of the world’s largest thermal waste-to-energy plants.

The client for the scheme is the UAE-based environment and waste management company Bee’ah. Ajman has also announced in recent years that it is looking at the possibilities of utilising waste-to-energy. The facility will recycle 400,000 tonnes a year of non-recyclable waste and generate 85MW of renewable energy.