Recently, a 300MW photovoltaic (PV) solar project has been installed at Sakaka City in Al
Jouf province of Saudi Arabia. It’s a joint achievement of ACWA Power (70%) and AlGihaz’s
subsidiary AlGihaz Renewable Energy Company (30%).
The power plant, which is connected to the national electricity grid, will supply enough clean energy to power more than 75,000 Saudi Arabian households and avoid the production of more than 430,000t of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year. The project will offset approximately 10.5 million tonnes of CO2 and avoid the use of more than 50 million barrels of diesel during its lifetime.
Sakaka solar project is the first utility-scale renewable energy project developed under the National Renewable Energy Programme of Saudi Arabia (NREP). Managed by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources (MEIM), NREP is designed to balance
the country’s energy mix to achieve long-term economic stability while reducing carbon
emissions.
Sakaka is the first in a series of projects being built under the programme, which aims to
generate 9.5GW of renewable energy by 2023 and 58.7GW by 2030.
The Renewable Energy Project Development Office (REPDO) of MEIM issued a Request For Proposal (RFP) for the solar project on April 2017 – and received eight bids from pre-qualified consortia led by international and regional renewable energy developers. The bid
opening ceremony for the project was held in October 2017. ACWA Power was selected by REPDO for the development of the Sakaka solar project in February 2018.
