Bahrain solar panel tenders set to be finalised

Bahrain solar panel tenders set to be finalised

Bahrain will finalise on two tenders towards installing and operating 7.5 Mwac grid-tied solar panels next week, while others covering more than 30 Mwac are underway. The two bids which close on December 22 are for setting up power plants on rooftops and car parks of the ministries of Education and Labour and Social Development. This reflects Bahrain’s “increased pace of utilisation of solar energy”, said Sustainable Energy Authority (SEA) president Dr Abdulhussain Mirza. A grid-tied system uses solar panels to generate electricity from sunlight. Excess power is exported to the utility grid, and similarly, when the household requires more power, those needs are met by imports from the grid. MWac stands for Mega-Watt, Alternating Current. It is a measure of the power output from a solar installation after the output of the PV (photovoltaic) panels have been converted to AC via inverter devices. This differs from the MWp measurement which measures only the Direct Current output of solar PV panels. “We are in the process of awarding contracts for the construction and operation of 7.5 MWac of grid-tied solar capacity,” Dr Mirza told the GDN. “In addition to this, we have more than 30 Mwac to be tendered soon.