Middle Eastern oil giant Saudi Arabia is set to develop a mammoth 2.6 gigawatt (GW) solar park in the Makkah Region, home to the two holiest mosques in Islam, the Al-Haram Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.
A consortium consisting of French-based renewable energy company EDF Renewables and Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company Masdar has been awarded the contract to build the 400 megawatt (MW) Dumat Al Jandal wind farm, the first wind farm to be built in Saudi Arabia and the largest in the Middle East.
According to information provided by the Renewable Energy Project Development Office of Saudi Arabia to industry news site pv magazine, the country is planning to tender 2,225 megawatts (MW) of solar in 2019 and has upgraded its long-term solar targets to 20 gigawatts (GW) by 2023 and 40 GW by 2030.
Saudi Arabia officials announced earlier this week that the country had received four bids for the proposed 400 megawatt (MW) Dumat al-Jandal onshore wind farm at prices that rival the lowest bids received anywhere in the world.
