Oman seeks advisor for waste-to-energy project

Business Tuesday 16/January/2018 17:29 PM
By: Times News Service
Oman seeks advisor for waste-to-energy project

Muscat: The Sultanate’s state-owned Oman Power and Water Procurement Company (OPWP) has floated a tender for seeking a consultant for conducting a techno-economic feasibility study for building the country’s first waste-to-energy project.
The capacity and the capital expenditure of the project, which will be built in coordination with Oman Environmental Services Holding Co (Be’ah), will be determined later.
If the project becomes feasible, the winning consultant will also act as a technical advisor for preparing the tender document for selecting an independent producer through a competitive bidding process, according to a tender announcement.
It appears that Be’ah will provide municipal solid waste from landfills as feedstock for the waste-to-energy scheme.
The waste-to-energy project is expected to strengthen Oman’s plans to diversify sources of electricity, away from merely gas-fired power plants.
Renewable energy has also an important place in the strategy of OPWP as the government is moving forward to diversify its energy resources to drive sustainability at the economic and environmental fronts. OPWP plans to implement several solar and wind-based renewable energy projects in a move to generate 10 per cent (2,500-3,000 megawatt) of power in the total mix by 2025.
As part of the move, OPWP last month floated a tender to develop a large scale independent solar project with a capacity of 500 megawatt (MW).
The estimated project cost of the solar project is approximately $500 million, which will be built, owned and operated by the private sector, and the scope of the project includes financing, procurement, engineering, construction, operation and maintenance of a new power plant, which will be located at Ibri — some 300km west from Muscat.
The electricity generation capacity in Oman has grown to 6,116 megawatt in 2017, from 2,314 megawatt in 2004, indicating an annual average growth rate of 8.3 per cent.
In fact, peak demand for electricity is projected to increase at an annual average of 6 per cent per year, from 5,920 MW in 2016 to 8,960 MW in 2023. Peak demand is expected to grow at a lower rate than energy demand due to the introduction of Cost-Reflective Tariffs (CRT) for large commercial, government, and industrial consumers in 2017. The CRT is time-differentiated, where the tariff is more representative of the actual cost of supply at different periods during the year, noting higher costs during peak and summer periods, and lower costs during off-peak and winter periods. Some large customers are expected to shift their demand in response to the new tariff.