The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has inaugurated the fifth phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, adding an additional 900MW of capacity to the world’s largest single-site solar park.
DEWA and its joint venture partners ACWA Power and the Gulf Investment Corporation, which own 60% and 40% of the project respectively, completed construction on the first phase of the facility in 2013. This added 13MW of solar capacity to the project, which sits around 50km south of the city of Dubai.
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The latest phase of construction brought the farm’s total capacity up to 2.8GW, comparable to the capacity of the Golmud Solar Park in China, the largest solar farm by capacity.
The developers plan to add to the capacity of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in the coming years, with a sixth phase of construction planned to be completed by 2030. This would add a further 1.8GW of power to the project by the end of the decade, and will see the total investment in the project reach a staggering US$13.6 billion (AED50 billion), as the UAE looks to decarbonise its energy mix.
“Aligned with the UAE’s vision, Dubai has developed a clear strategy and pathway to achieve its targets of generating 25% of its energy requirements from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% by 2050,” said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, who attended the unveiling of the latest phase of the project.
“Dubai is resolute in its commitment to becoming one of the most sustainable cities in the world, with diverse initiatives,” Al Maktoum added. “The rapid progress of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park project is yet another example of our strong ethos of public-private partnerships.”
This combination of public and private support has already paid dividends at the project, not only in terms of its power capacity, but its use of an independent power producer model. The joint venture companies made a world record bid of just US$1.69 per kilowatt hour, a move which will keep the cost of electricity produced at the facility low.
The expansion of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park’s capacity will go a long way towards realising the UAE’s solar power goals. In 2021, figures from Rystad Energy estimated that the country’s solar PV capacity would increase from 2.1GW to 8.5GW by the end of 2025. In January this year, DEWA CEO Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer noted that solar power now accounts for 14% of Dubai’s total energy production.