On September 9, 2013, the U.S. Army Engineering & Support Center in Huntsville, Alabama, acting in conjunction with the Army Energy Initiatives Task Force (“EITF”), issued the third round of awards under the multi-award task order contract for renewable and alternative energy (Solicitation Number W912DY-11-R-0036, the “MATOC”) issued last summer. The Army received 45 proposals for the wind technology segment of the MATOC, but only seventeen (17) Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (“ID/IQ”) contracts were awarded, and only four (4) of those were awarded to small businesses (as defined in the solicitation). While the 17 ID/IQ contracts do not authorize the construction of any specific projects, they do give the contract recipients an exclusive right to bid on task order Requests for Proposals (“RFPs”) for wind projects that will be issued by individual installations under the MATOC.
These awards represent yet another step forward in launching the Army’s $7 billion solicitation for privately-financed renewable energy projects. The awardees submitted proposals last October. Since then, the EITF has been working diligently with industry participants on a standard form power purchase agreement- a form that is expected to serve as the “standard” contract for a wide level of renewable energy procurements, including base-level RFPs. (Stoel Rives LLP attorneys, on behalf of clients and other industry stakeholders, have provided comments on an advanced version of the standard form.)
The total number of wind-energy RFPs that will be issued under the MATOC is not known, but many in the industry expect the number to be small relative to the number of solar project proposals the Department of Defense will solicit.
The first ID/IQ contracts were awarded to five geothermal developers on May 3, 2013, and the second round was awarded to twenty-two solar developers on August 28, 2013. No task orders for geothermal or solar projects have been issued under the MATOC umbrella to date. However, several solar RFPs and requests for statements of qualifications have been issued separately in recent months. While the Army has not announced awardees under the biomass portion of the MATOC, its press release in August stated that those awards will be announced by the end of this calendar year.
