Spanish-headquartered solar tracker manufacturer PV Hardware (PVH) has signed a deal with the China Energy Engineering Corporation (CEEC) to supply 1.7GW of solar trackers to the 2.06GW Al Shuaibah solar project in Saudi Arabia.
The news follows PVH’s commissioning of a manufacturing facility last November in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a total capacity of 8GW of solar trackers and infrastructure. The company now boasts total production capacity of 25GW, and has provided more than 10GW of infrastructure to solar projects across the Middle East, and its strong production capacity in the region could prove vital for projects such as CEEC’s solar facility.
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The project is part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, an ambitious project to expand its renewable power sector to the point where clean energy meets half of the country’s energy demand by the end of the decade.
The government initially targeted a renewable capacity of 9GW through this scheme, but already has 27.3GW of clean power in its pipeline, including the Al Shuaibah project, and large-scale investments such as these will be critical to delivering the goals of the vision.
“Al Shuaibah is a very important project for PVH to showcase our expertise with product engineering and resilient design adapting to a projected lifetime of 35 years,” said PVH Middle East CEO Youssef El Sayed. “This project is a benchmark to commemorate PVH’s local content strength in delivering large-scale projects.”
Also announced last November, the Al Shuabiah plant aims to be the one of the largest single-site solar projects in the world. The project has been supported by a number of investors, including CEEC, Saudi energy developer ACWA Power and Saudi Public Investment Fund subsidiary Badeel, and the involvement of PVH only adds to the international nature of the project.
Considering the vast scale of the project, optimising operations through the use of solar trackers could provide significant benefits to the facility’s energy output, although PVH did not specify to extent to which its trackers would improve productivity.
“Our bond with both ACWA and CEEC is further strengthened with this collaboration,” said a PVH spokesperson. “Our portfolio continues to grow as we supply with the fastest turnaround and highest quality through our own manufacturing facility in Jeddah.”
