Tunisia’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy has kicked off a new procurement exercise for large-scale solar. Tunisia’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy has launched a tender for the construction of several large-scale PV projects with a combined capacity of 200 MW.
The 100MW solar photovoltaic plant is located in Metbassta near Kairouan. The five projects, once completed, will represent 6% of Tunisia’s electricity generation capacity. The Tunisian Government aims to bring its renewable energy installed capacity to 30% of the total by 2030. This entails building 1,000MW in 2017-20, and 1,250MW in 2021-2030.
Tunisia is supporting utility-scale solar through a series of tenders, the latest of which was launched in January 2023. It also finalized a 500 MW solar tender in December 2019. The country's cumulative installed PV capacity stood at just 506 MW by the end of 2023, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
One third of the projects will be for wind farms and two thirds for solar photovoltaics. Tunisia’s national grid is connected to those of Algeria and Libya which together helped supply about 12% of Tunisia’s power consumption in the first half of 2023.
It is subject to authorisation by MIEM and is set by Decree No. 2016-1123: 10 MW for solar PV and solar thermal; 30 MW for wind energy; 15 MW for biomass; and 5 MW for projects using other renewable resources. Box 3. Addressing power system flexibility in Tunisia
With these favourable conditions, the productivity of PV solar systems in Tunisia is very high. According to IRENA’s Global Atlas, annual electricity production by PV solar systems varies between 1 450 kWh per kilowatt-peak (kWp) in the northwest region and 1 830 kWh/kWp for systems installed in the extreme southeast region.