The Malaysian government has opened a 1-GW tender for solar projects under the fourth round of its Large Scale Solar (LSS) procurement programme.
The competitive bidding process was launched on May 31, the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (KeTSA) announced. It explained that the competition was offering the largest volume in a single tender round so far, as this is aimed at supporting the sector and stimulating investments following the COVID-19 crisis. The entire amount of investments to be attracted stands at MYR 4 billion (USD 931m/EUR 836m).
Interested parties will have three months to make their proposals. Each developer will be able to bid for up to 50 MW, which is half of the maximum bidding capacity allowed in the previous tender rounds. Only three bids will be possible for a single developer.
According to the tender regulations, the implementation of the projects has to begin before the end of this year, with commissioning required by end-2023. The project development is expected to take up to 18 months.
In the first three rounds of the LSS, Malaysia tendered 370 MW, 520 MW and 500 MW of solar PV capacity, respectively. The LSS mechanism was introduced by the Malaysian government in 2016 to replace feed-in tariffs (FiTs).