Solar panels installed in 2015 extend across 300 meters of land next to the Beirut River, in a project dubbed the "Beirut River Solar Snake." (Credit: Matthieu Karam/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Caretaker Energy and Water Minister Walid Fayad launched a call for tenders on Wednesday, through the public procurement authority platform, for the construction of a solar farm (a photovoltaic power station) with a total capacity of eight megawatts.
The plant, to be built along the Beirut River, will serve as an expansion of a power station previously built by the Energy Ministry in 2015 and dubbed the “Beirut River Solar Snake”(BRSS). This original plan has a total capacity of one megawatt.
Following a call for tenders launched by the ministry in 2013, the BSSR project had been awarded to a consortium of five companies, four of which were Lebanese: mechanical engineering firms Asaco and Phoenix, and concrete and metal frame suppliers Dalal Steel Industries and Derviche Haddad PPB Structures.
The plant, meant to reach a total capacity of 10 megawatts (by gradually extending its capacity by one megawatt per year), never reached its initial target capacity. Also meant to eventually cover 6.5 kilometers along the river, today it only stretches as far as 300 meters.
“The cost of the [expanded] solar farm will be financed through the budget of the Energy Ministry and will be connected to Electricité du Liban (EDL)’s grid,” said Fayad in a press release issued by the ministry. The initial BSSR project had cost the ministry $4 million in 2015.
This marks the latest project in a series of initiatives undertaken by the ministry, aimed at expanding the solar energy market in Lebanon. It also announced the completion of the “National Renewable Energy Plan” for the years 2024-2030, through which it put forward its goal to increase Lebanon’s share of renewable energy to more than 30 percent. This is up from 20 percent today — a share that the country had reached as a result of private initiatives undertaken by Lebanese citizens to adapt to rampant electricity shortages which had plunged Lebanon in the dark in 2021.
In May 2023, Fayad had also signed contracts with 11 consortia that promised to produce a total of 165 megawatts of solar energy across the country.
The ministry called upon companies specialized in renewable and solar energy to partake in the project and announced a bidding period of 45 days, from Sep. 11 till Oct. 23, 2024, after which the project will take 12 months to be completed.