A consortium of Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, Japan's Marubeni and South Korea's SK E&S Co is the lowest bidder for the estimated $1.3 billion Hassyan 1 independent power project (IPP), a Taqa spokesman said on Monday.

'The bidding took place on Monday and negotiations will start next week,' the spokesman said.

Taqa (40 per cent), Marubeni (40 per cent) and SK E&S (20 per cent) will together own 49 per cent of the project company while Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) will own the remaining 51 per cent, he said.

Switzerland's Alstom and Samsung Engineering are the engineering, procurement and consruction (EPC) partners of the consortium.

The Hassyan 1, the first of six planned IPPs in Dubai, is a Greenfield combined cycle gas turbine power plant with a capacity of 1600 MW (megawatts). It will be developed on a build-own-operate (BOO) basis and the electricity will be sold via a 25-year power purchase agreement to Dewa, the state-owned utility.

Located 60 kilometres south-west of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Hassyan 1 is the first of six planned IPPs in Dubai that will form a power and water complex with total capacity of 9000 MW of power generation and 720 million gallons per day (MIGD) of desalinated water.

State-owned Taqa is the sixth-largest global independent power producer in the world with gross power generation capacity of 16,402 MW.  Its power plants are in the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, India, Morocco and Ghana.

Despite sluggish economic growth, peak power demand is rising in Dubai. – Reuters