SELECTION FOR CONSULTANTS BY THE WORLD BANK

REQUEST FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST (REOI)

Electronic Submissions through World Bank Group eConsultant2

https://wbgeconsult2.worldbank.org/wbgec/index.html

ASSIGNMENT OVERVIEW

Assignment Title
Sindh Province: Renewable Energy Locational Study

Assignment Countries:
Pakistan

ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION

A. INTRODUCTION
The Government of Pakistan’s first steps towards development of renewable energy came in 2006 with
the release of the Policy for Development of Renewable Energy Generation. This covered small hydro
(<50 MW), solar and wind, and set out an initial plan for development of renewable energy within the
country.
Despite huge potential, installed solar and wind power capacity remains relatively low. Pakistan has 400
MW of grid connected utility-scale solar, all installed within the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park in Punjab
Province. For wind the figure is 789 MW, all of it in Sindh Province. The total installed capacity of all
generation sources in Pakistan is around 28 GW. Variable renewable energy (VRE) therefore accounts
for about 4% of the installed capacity and about 1.8% of generation.
The World Bank, under the Sindh Solar Energy Project1 [P159712], is supporting Pakistan in moving from
a feed-in-tariff (FIT) regime2 to competitive bidding by financing the construction of publicly-owned ‘solar
parks’, and the design and launch of an initial solar auction in Sindh Province to identify developers for
the construction of privately-owned solar power projects within the solar parks.
A solar park is a concentrated zone of development of solar power projects. The auctioneer prepares and
secures availability of land, obtains required permits and prepares the site (including providing necessary
infrastructure). Once the site is ready, an auction is held, and the winning bidder(s) are awarded the right
to construct their solar power plant(s) on the site. Following a rigorous pre-qualification stage based on
technical and financial considerations, the auction winner is selected based on the energy purchase
agreement (EPA) price offered. The main benefits of a solar park are the access by Independent Power
Producers (IPPs) to developed land and infrastructure, economies of scale in capital and operations cost,
better network planning, access to lower cost of finance through a lower risk perception, and local
community development.
As part of the implementation of the Sindh Solar Energy Project, the World Bank has agreed with the
Sindh Energy Department (SED) to commission an upstream study to identify zones suitable for VRE

1
This is a new $100 million IDA lending project that was approved by the World Bank board in June 2018. It is a five-
year project and the client is the Energy Department within the Government of Sindh.
2
Referred to as an “Up-Front Tariff” in Pakistan.
(solar and wind) development, leading to identification of potential solar parks for development under the
Project.

B. GENERAL SCOPE OF THE SERVICES

The envisaged scope of work will involve four tasks, as follows:

(i) Grid integration analysis including an identification of substations that can accommodate solar
and/or wind capacity without major upgrades, and those that would require major transmission
and/or substation upgrades to allow the addition of VRE capacity;
(ii) Assessment and ranking of renewable energy zones using the MapRE tool and utilization the best
available data on solar and wind resource potential, transmission lines, elevation, land use,
protected and sensitive areas, settlements, and other relevant data; and combining of this data with
the results from the grid integration analysis;
(iii) More detailed identification of potential sites for solar parks, using the results from the prior work to
carry out a land availability analysis that investigates land ownership and other issues in a 10km
radius around high ranking substations;
(iv) Development of a solar park strategy, based on lessons learned from Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park,
international experiences, discussions with key public sector agencies, and consultations with
private sector developers.

The Terms of Reference (TOR) for the assignment will be further developed at the Request for Proposals
(RFP) stage, and the tasks may change and/or be further developed at that time.

C. EXPRESSION OF INTEREST & INFORMATION

Consultant firms are invited to submit Expressions of Interest (EOI) for this selection, which shall respond
to the following qualification criteria:
• Extensive knowledge of Pakistan with regards to electricity sector planning and VRE deployment,
and strong contacts within relevant institutions including NTDC and the distribution companies
(DISCOs);
• Expertise in carrying out grid integration analysis, including with the relevant software tools;
• Expertise in deploying open source geospatial tools and experience with geospatial analysis;
• Prior experience working on World Bank financed or commissioned projects;
• Ability to carry out detailed work on the ground in Sindh Province and engage with key
counterparts, including field visits.

D. FIRM PROFILE
It is anticipated that Consultants responding to this EOI will be firms, or a collection of firms (with one firm
designated as the lead vendor). It is further anticipated that firms will either be based in Pakistan, or have
a Pakistan-based firm as part of their team.

E. SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
The World Bank now invites eligible Consultants to indicate their interest in being invited to submit a full
proposal at the RFP stage.

Interested Consultants must provide information indicating that they are qualified to perform the
services, referring to the guidance above. Consultants may associate with other invited and non-invited
firms to enhance their qualifications. The EOI submission shall be in the form of a single attached PDF file,
including any annexes. Please note that the total size of this PDF file should be less than 5MB, and there
is no need to complete the text fields available on eConsult. We require that Consultants limit their EOI
to a focused and tailored submission not to exceed 10 pages, exclusive of CVs and suggestions/comments
on the proposed approach/methodology, which can be included as annex material. EOI submissions that
go beyond the 10 page limit WILL NOT BE REVIEWED beyond this point, which may negatively impact on
the scoring that is given. The intention at the REOI stage is to assess the suitability of each Consultant to
be invited to the RFP stage, and so firms should focus on responding to the criteria outlined in Section C
above, and should keep their EOI submissions concise and to the point.

F. NOTES
Following the completion of the EOI stage, a shortlist of eligible consultants will be invited to the RFP
stage, which will include a full technical and financial evaluation.

Interested vendors are hereby invited to submit expressions of interest.

Expressions of Interest should be submitted electronically through World Bank Group eConsultant2
(https://wbgeconsult2.worldbank.org/wbgec/index.html).