One of the tenders concerns a 23 MW solar project planned near Damascus.

The Syrian Ministry of Electricity Transmission Establishment has issued two tenders for the construction of solar power plants with a combined generation capacity of 63 MW.

The tender announcement was published by Pakistan’s Alternative Energy Development Board after the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Expatriates forwarded it for issue by what the tender document calls “friendly countries”.

The first tender, which has a bid deadline of March 20, is for a 40 MW solar plant near the Jandar natural gas power plant in the Homs governorate of central Syria.

A second tender with the same closing date is for a 23 MW solar project near Damascus.

Reconstructing with solar

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Years of civil war have crippled Syria’s power grid and the government of president Bashar al-Assad appears to view large scale solar as an option to revive infrastructure. With several power stations out of service and transmission lines destroyed, utility scale PV offers a scalable and rapid replacement solution.

The U.S.-based Payne Institute for Public Policy said power infrastructure damage has occurred mainly in low and medium-voltage grids in combat areas. Two conventional power plants were destroyed: a 1 GW steam turbine in Aleppo and a 460 MW facility at Ziazon.

The World Bank reported in 2007 – four years before the outbreak of war – the nation had around 7.5 GW of power generation capacity. The multilateral lender at the time said those facilities were insufficient to meet peak power demand of 6.56 GW.

The war-torn nation had only 1 MW of installed solar capacity at the end of 2018, according to International Renewable Energy Agency figures.