Saudi Developer ACWA to Build Record Low Cost Solar Plant

Posted by sanny111 on March 3rd, 2015

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ACWA Power, a Saudi Arabia-based water and power developer, is building a 260MW solar photovoltaic plant in Dubai for a record low cost of US$.058 per kWh, as PV power continues to become more competitive with other forms of energy.
That’s how much it will receive as a fixed tariff over 25 years for what will be the largest solar plant in Middle East. The price it bid is 20% cheaper than the previous benchmark for solar tenders. What’s more, it is 30% cheaper than the price of gas that is currently used for nearly all of the electricity generation in the United Arab Emirates.
As Mark Lewis, from KeplerChevreux, noted of the Dubai deal: “This is a major breakthrough in the oil-fired Emirates, and a clear demonstration of the ongoing global energy transition. We think this is a landmark deal both in terms of the extremely competitive cost at which the project will generate power and the potential for a much greater take-up of renewables in countries that have so far been slow to embrace them. “
A week earlier, ACWA was part of a consortium that won a tender in South Africa for the construction of that country’s first solar tower plus storage facility – a 100MW facility. The significance of that is that the South African facility will be built with no subsidy.
Lewis noted that the agreed price – in EU currently terms at EUR50 per MWh – is not just a new milestone in solar pricing, it compares extremely favourably, for example, with the guaranteed  real-terms price of GBP92.5 MWh over 35 years that the UK government has offered for the construction of the new Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant.
“Over the next two decades we see the global energy transition being driven by the ever-increasing competitiveness of renewables versus fossil fuels, and deals such as this are a clear indication of this competitiveness already today,” said Lewis.

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