Malaysia issues its third 500MW solar tender

The Energy Commission of Malaysia has released a tender for 500MWac of grid-connected large-scale solar projects to be developed on Peninsular Malaysia.

This is the third round of 500MW tenders issued under the country's LSS programme in support of utility-scale PV.

The LSS 3 plants, ranging in size from 1-100MWac will sell power to major utility Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) through power purchase agreements (PPAs), with commissioning expected in 2021.

The tender document states: "Information on the injection points for connection to the grid will be advised upon the requisition of the RFP documents". 

The RfP documents have been made available until 27 February and the deadline for submissions is 19 August 2019.

As per Malaysian government policy, foreign entities involved in a consortium cannot have a stake that is larger than 49%.

Energy minister Yeo Bee Yin had said last November that the LSS 3 tender would be released in January.

The EC awarded around 563MWac of PV capacity in its second Large-Scale Solar (LSS 2) tender round. The tender was originally only for 460MWac, but it was heavily oversubscribed. The earlier LSS 1 had also allocated more capacity awarded than was originally tendered.

Last month, Scatec Solar completed the 65MW Gurun PV project in Malaysia, its first of three 65MW projects. Last December, TNB also completed a 50MWac solar power project in Selangor, Peninsular Malaysia. Even Malaysian state-owned oil and gas giant Petronas has become the latest fossil fuel major to show intentions to move into the renewable energy space, with a focus on solar power, through early stage announcements towards the end of last year.

Tags: malaysia, lss, tnb, ec, sorsea, tender, pv power plants, ssfa19