Acwa Power has won the rights to develop the Skaka IPP PV solar project, a 300MW facility to be built with an estimated investment of SR1.13bn ($302m) in Al Jouf, Saudi Arabia.
The project was awarded by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources (REPDO) through a bidding process in which consortiums of eight local and international bidders took part.
Acwa Power also bagged a 25-year power purchase contract supporting the solar plant by bidding a price of $0.023/kWh. The new solar plant to be built in the northern part of the country is scheduled to be commissioned during 2019.
Last month, REPDO had shortlisted Acwa Power and a consortium of Japan’s Marubeni, Khaled Ahmed Juffali Energy & Utilities and Axia Power out of the eight bids submitted for the project as part of Round 1 of the National Renewable Energy Program (NREP).
Financial close on the solar project is expected to be reached by the end of this month.
The solar plant, which will be built on a site of over 6km2, will be the first project in the National Renewable Energy Program (NREP).
The plant is the first in a series of clean energy procurement as part of Saudi national renewables program that aims to produce 9.5GW of renewable energy by 2023 as a first phase.
ACWA Power chairman Mohammad Abdullah Abunayyan said: "We are proud to have set yet another world record tariff for PV power, now at home and are humbled to be entrusted with the first utility scale renewable energy plant to be developed in the Kingdom, which will be the foundation of the visionary ambitious national program that seeks to maximize the utilization of renewable energy sources, as defined by the National Transition Plan 2020 and the objectives of the Saudi Vision 2030 ".