Greek industrial conglomerate Mytilineos obtained an EPC contract from French IPP Total Eren to develop a new solar project in Uzbekistan. Named “Tutly”, the project is located near the city of Samarkand and set to have a generation capacity of 131.3MWp. The signing of the contract was formally announced by Mytilineos on June 8.
According to the contract, the renewable and storage development (RSD) business unit of Mytilineos will provide Total Eren with a turn-key PV power plant and a high-voltage substation. Mytilineos said that the construction of the Tutly project has already begun, and the project will be connected to the grid by near the end of 2021.
The project comprises 295,000 pieces of bifacial modules, 3,644 single-axis trackers, and 625 string inverters. The annual electricity production of the project is expected to reach 270GWh, which is sufficient to meet the demand from 140,000 residents in the country. The project is also estimated to help offset 160,000 tons of annual CO2 emissions.
The financing of the Tutly Project was secured in May when Total Eren received an €87.4 million loan package for the development of the project.The loan package was jointly created by the European Investment Bank (EIB), PROPARCO (a subsidiary of Agence Française de Développement), and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The electricity from the Tutly project will be sold to Uzbekistan’s national grid under a 25-year PPA. Mytilineos pointed out that the Tutly project is its third project that it is working with Total Eren in Central Asia. The other two are the Nomad project (28MWp) and the M-KAT project (100MWp), both of which are located in Kazakhstan.
Earlier reports from various energy news outlets stated that the government of Uzbekistan wants to increase the share of renewables in its energy mix to 25% and raise the installed capacity for PV generation to 5GW by 2030. Foreign investors and project developers such as Total Eren have flocked to the country on account of numerous tenders.