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Marbella's desalination plant completed the second phase of its expansion on 31 May meaning it can now produce 20 million cubic metres per year for a population that needs around 90 million cubic metres. Now, the public water company on the western Costa del Sol, Acosol is looking for bidders to take on an energy saving contract.
Acosol has just awarded the management of the project to the Narval and Prydo alliance of consultants for 229,989 euros. The project will take two years to complete and aims to save up to 30 per cent of the energy running costs. The water company is currently evaluating the bids that have come in since the contract was tendered in February for 8.5 million euros.
The contract has attracted the interest of several giants in the sector. These are Aquambiente-Elmasa; Cox Water; Drace Geocisa-Covico; Medio Ambiente Residuos Agua y Marea (the contractor for the two phases of the expansion from 6 hm3 to 20 hm3); Remondis Agua, and Sacyr Agua. Tedagua and Naxfor who submitted their bid after the deadline.
"To achieve the energy savings, energy improvements will be made to the seawater collection pumping system, intermediate pumping in the pre-treatment, product water pumping and the high-pressure pumping system through isobaric chamber type energy recuperators. All this will contribute to reducing the total electricity consumption to produce desalinated water," summarises the specifications, published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU).
The Andalusian energy agency is contributing three million euros and there is a possibility of European funding. The rest will come from the Mancomunidad association of town halls on the western Costa del Sol's improvement fund.
The contractor will have to draw up and execute the project. It is essential to improve energy efficiency in a plant that works with powerful pumps and high pressure and in which the cost is one of the main maintenance variables. Moreover, the desalination plant's peak electricity requirements have sometimes caused outages in the surrounding area.
"The overall or average annual energy efficiency target, taking into account the annual reference production and the initial data provided, must be at least 1.40 kwh/m3", continues the technical specifications, which clearly state the need to programme the project in such a way as to condition the day-to-day operation of the desalination plant as little as possible. The final project will have to be supervised by the central government, which owns the plant. Moreover, energy efficiency was one of the bases of the agreement signed by the Mancomunidad and Acuamed in 2006.
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