London-based consultancy EY has submitted a low bid of AED5.5m ($1.36m) for the advisory services contract for a solar photovoltaic independent power producer (IPP) project, which will comprise the fifth phase of Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Solar Park.

Other companies that submitted a bid for the package are:

• Synergy Consulting (US/India): AED5.86m
• PwC (UK): AED8.30m
• Idom Consulting (Spain): AED12.93m

A fourth company, Spain’s Vector Cuatro Renewables, offered AED4.73m for the contract but failed to provide a bank guarantee.

In July, Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) appointed Advisian, the consulting arm of Australian engineering consultant WorleyParsons, as the Owner’s Engineer for the $3.8bn concentrated solar power (CSP) project in Dubai.

Advisian has been appointed by Noor Energy 1, the project company set up to develop the 700MW CSP plant. Noor Energy 1 is a joint venture between Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power, the developer selected to develop the plant, and state utility.

Dewa awarded the contract to Acwa Power to develop the 700MW CSP project under the IPP model in September last year. The Saudi firm was awarded the contract for a levelised tariff of 7.3$cents a kilowatt hour ($c/kWh), the lowest unsubsidised tariff for utility-scale CSP solar in the world.

In May, Acwa Power awarded the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal to China’s Shanghai Electric for the CSP project. Shanghai Electric has since awarded a contract to Spain’s Abengoa to provide CSP technology and subcontracting services for the project.

The value of work to be undertaken directly by Abengoa is about $650m. Abengoa will provide the technology for the planned three 200MW CSP parabolic troughs. The CSP project will also contain a 100MW CSP tower.

The project will be commissioned in stages, starting in the fourth quarter of 2020. The plant will feature a combination of tower and parabolic trough technologies, which will collect heat and store it in molten salt to enable the supply of power during the night. The facility will contain the world’s tallest CSP tower, which is planned to be 260 metres.

The 700MW project will form the fourth phase of Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid (MBR) solar park, and will be the first CSP project in action. The emirate had set a production target of 1GW of CSP solar by 2030, but this may be increased in the future due to the size of the awarded fourth phase contract.