Great thread.
Here is a quite old and large thread about solar energy in KSA.
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/ksa-taps-the-sun-to-meet-a-third-of-its-energy-needs.310345/
Saudi Arabians Could Export Solar for the Next Twenty Centuries
Every square meter of Saudi Arabia produces an extraordinary 7 kilowatt hours of energy daily in each 12 hours of sun power. If the Saudis were to use up each days solar energy supply, or 12,425 TWh of electricity, it would be a 72 year supply.
Put another way,
in just one day, enough solar energy hits Saudi sands to power the kingdom for 72 years, according to a
study made by the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology.
That is an extraordinary resource. It is significantly more than the rest of the world. For example: as a Californian who used a typical 15 kilowatt hours of energy a day, this means my entire home could have been fully solar powered by just 2 square meters – or about 3 feet by 6 feet – of solar panels in Saudi Arabia!
And Saudi Arabia has over 2 trillion square meters able to produce 14 trillion kilowatt hours of solar energy every sunny day – that is enough to power the world.
But of course, no country wants to be entirely devoted to energy production, least of all one that is still making good money from digging up oil, but it is indicative of the kind of money the Kingdom could be earning from solar exports rather than oil exports.
Just as it earns its vast income from oil now, it could equally well earn a similarly vast income from solar in the future. And for vast eons of time.
Transitioning to solar from oil would take an initial investment in the infrastructure, and then would yield an income stream regardless of fuel depletion, because solar is there for the long run, unlike the oil which is getting harder and harder to get out of the ground.
But it is Saudi Arabia itself which is in the best position in the world to make that transition and invest in a replacement for oil. With oil prices at $102 a barrel at today’s market price, the Saudis have over $30 trillion in underground assets.
With that much money in huge (but depleting) assets in petroleum and natural gas reserves, now is the time that Saudi Arabia should invest and become the world’s largest producer of green solar energy.
Saudi Arabia could export solar for centuries either as electricity into the Desertec grid, or as hydrogen fuel, using its tankers and pipelines.
Desertec, which will be shipping billions of kilowatt hours of desert solar energy across to Europe in the near future is becoming a reality in more MENA region nations with the addition of Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, but the Saudis are not members of the visionary project.
Even though; unlike its poorer neighbors, it has tremendous financial assets – enough to become a leader in the project along with the giant German energy companies RWE and E.On – because it could self-fund its own Desertec infrastructure investment.
With over 250 hours of sunshine each month, Saudi Arabia is ideally located to make the most of solar power.
It even has the infrastructure already in place to be a leader in the solar-powered hydrogen economy of the future. Increasingly hydrogen researchers are turning to sustainable long term sources – wind or solar – for hydrogen production.
Solar powered hydrogen could be transported in the same pipeline and tanker infrastructure that now moves our climate-destroying oil energy around the world.
Saudi Aramco – 100% owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – through its affiliate, Vela Marine International Ltd, owns and operates the world’s second largest tanker fleet to help transport its crude oil production, which amounted to 3 billion barrels a year. It is a world leader in exploration, producing, refining, distribution, shipping and marketing.
Most of this infrastructure and expertise could be repurposed to transform Saudi Arabia into a solar hydrogen economy.
This infrastructure could be re-engineered to become a gigantic carrier fleet for hydrogen made with sustainable solar energy and shipped worldwide. New solar infrastructure could be added, as it has begun to do in
making polysilicon from its sand.
It is Saudi Arabia that holds the key, with its unique combination of natural and financial resources, to creating a huge long-term future for the world that is based on a sustainable permanent source of energy: our sun.
- See more at:
Saudis Could Export Solar for the Next Twenty Centuries | Green Prophet
WFES 2017: Saudi Arabia announces new energy master plan
Speaking yesterday at an Abu Dhabi’s Sustainability Week (ADSW) event, Saudi Arabia’s energy, industry and mineral resources minister Khalid Al-Falih announced a new grand energy plan for the country.
JANUARY 17, 2017
ILIAS TSAGAS
The new program is set to commence in a few weeks’ time, when Saudi Arabia’s government will launch the first round of bidding for a new renewable energy tender, Al-Falih announced at the World Future Energy Summit 2017 (WFES) in Abu Dhabi. The energy minister did not, however, provide any details regarding the capacity that will be auctioned in the tender.
He did inform the attendants that Saudi Arabia’s new master program for the energy sector will require between USD 30 to 50 billion investment, which will need to come via the private sector.
Solar and wind power will be the preferred technologies in the auctions, but geothermal and waste projects will also be considered, just with a smaller role to play.
Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s biggest oil producer, is aiming for renewable energy installations, primarily of solar and wind, of 9.5 GW by 2023, but this is just the starting point, the country’s energy minister told the ADSW.
By 2030, the country will generate 70 percent of its electricity from natural gas and 30 percent from renewables and other sources, promised Al-Falih.
“Other resources” include nuclear power plants, of which plans for two nuclear reactors totaling 2.8 GW are currently in the early stages of consideration and planning.
Nevertheless, the new program that Al-Falih referred to yesterday, stems from last year’s Vision 2030 strategy, which is aimed at preparing the country for a post-oil economy.
The IMF recently cut its growth forecast for Saudi Arabia, with new estimates expecting that its GDP will only rise by 0.4% this year, down from 4% GDP growth that was predicted in October.
New regulatory framework: when?
Speaking today in front of a panel at the WFES, being held this week in Abu Dhabi as part of the city’s sustainability week, Osama Khawandanah, senior vice president of energy trading and ventures at the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) said that the future renewable and conventional power plants will be based on independent power purchase (IPP) contracts and that this is a huge opportunity for the private sector to get involved.
Khawandanah was not able to answer whether the new program will include a feed-in tariff for renewable energy plants, after a member of the audience aimed the question at him. However, he said that SEC will commit to buying all generated electricity from the new renewable energy plants.
So, is there any means for optimism over the potential renewable energy sector on the horizon?
Thamer Al-Sharhan, managing director of ACWA, the country’s leading renewable energy developer, told the WFES that he has heard a number of promising plans over the last six years that didn’t materialize, but this time he has genuine optimism.
He told the panel that for the new plan to succeed, the country needs a clear, fair and transparent regulatory framework that promotes competition among private stakeholders. The private sector always allocates and measures the market risks and eventually comes up with practical solutions. But if the policy framework is not fair, it is very hard for an investor to find a solution. Al-Sharman urged the government to regulate a framework that allows the energy market to evolve from its current monopolistic character.
Other panelists chose to stress the renewable energy development opportunities in Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Middle East, by highlighting projects located in water desalination plants.
This idea has been mentioned a number of times at the summit in Abu Dhabi.
PV power for peak times
“Saudi Arabia has made its highest level commitment to renewables with its Vision 2030 strategy,” First Solar’s vice president of business development for the Middle East, Raed Bkayrat, told
pv magazine. “We already see developments in the market, with the ongoing tender to procure 100 MW of solar.”
Speaking more specifically, Bkayrat added that there is definitely “potential for Saudi Arabia to tap into solar energy more extensively in order to address its Peak Load requirements.”
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/01/17/wfes-2017-saudi-arabia-announces-new-energy-master-plan/
By
Bloomberg New Energy Finance on 22 February 2017
Source: Trade Arabia
Saudi Arabia is inviting bidders to qualify for its first renewable energy tender by 20 March. The world’s top crude exporter is laying the groundwork for a rollout of wind and solar power, which will allow it to reduce the amount of oil used domestically and, it hopes, will stimulate economic development in clean energy.
The selected parties will be announced by 10 April and will be able to present their offers for the projects from 17 April to the end of July, according to a statement by the energy ministry. As much as 700MW of wind and solar power will be available in this tender – the first stage of Saudi Arabia’s plan to develop almost 10GW of renewable energy by 2023.
Auctions were also trending in the news in India, after a World Bank-backed auction on 10 February produced a record low bid of 3.30 rupees (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour for solar PV. The auction for 750MW of power in Madhya Pradesh state included payment guarantees, annual tariff increases and power purchase agreements designed by the International Finance Corporation. All of which helped boost confidence in the projects for developers.
The lower electricity tariffs produced by India’s auction will be attractive to the country’s indebted state-run power retailers, and could help them improve their finances, according to BNEF.
The trend for allocating renewable energy capacity through competitive auctions may spur developers to scale up the size of projects in key European markets, according to state lender Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale. In an effort to meet the low tariffs demanded of auction winners, developers and financiers may seek to save on maintenance and grid-connection costs by building bigger wind parks, according to a NordLB spokesman.
These tactics may be in evidence in Germany’s auctions for 2.8GW of onshore wind capacity this year, and France’s plans to put 3GW of capacity under the hammer by 2019.
In other wind industry news, Siemens announced that it would close a wind turbine factory in Denmark last week, eliminating 430 jobs in the process. The factory in Engesvang produces smaller turbine blades and hasn’t been able to meet the growing demand for larger blades, including those needed for offshore wind farms.
Canadian utility Enbridge is joining up with Germany’s Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg on a EUR 1.8bn ($1.9bn) wind farm under construction in the German North Sea, according to a statement last Friday. EnBW is selling a 49.9% stake in the 497MW Hohe See wind farm to the Calgary-based firm, and the two companies will work on the project together. It is expected to start operations in August 2019.
In other news, climate change could trigger resource and border conflicts and in the worst cases precipitate war, according to top European and United Nations officials who spoke about the military threat of global warming at a world security conference in Munich last weekend.
“Climate change is a threat multiplier that leads to social upheaval and possibly even armed conflict,” the UN’s top climate official, Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, said at the conference. Climate change and population growth were named as the two most serious “megatrends” threatening international peace and stability by Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
The delicate balance between protecting the Arctic and extracting fossil fuels was discussed at the event, as was the economic threat posed by European renewable energy to Russia’s oil and gas supply.
The question of whether President Donald Trump pulls the US out of the Paris climate accord was also discussed. “The response of the international community will be significant,” in the ultimate decision of whether or not the agreement is abandoned by the US, said US Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
If no action is taken to tackle global warming, as much as 70% of Alpine snow could disappear by the end of the century, according to new research by the European Geosciences Union. The paper, which used three-dimensional modelling to understand the effects of global warming on mountain snow coverage, said that the Alps would lose about 30% of snow cover by 2100 even if countries limit temperature increases to below 2 degrees Celsius. So it might be time to grab your skis and hit the slopes while you still can.
Source: BNEF. Reproduced with permission.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/saudi-arabia-makes-first-steps-10gw-renewable-energy-rollout-19679/
Why Saudi Arabia's $50bn renewable energy programme is credible
The plan will set new benchmarks in competitiveness, commercial attractiveness and execution.
By
Ahmed S. Nada
Sunday, 26 February 2017 2:20 PM
Spotlight the kingdom first announced plans in 2012 for solar power to account for up to 23 percent of its energy mix but it now says 14 percent.
When the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Renewable Energy Project Development Office (REPDO) released its request for qualification (RFQ) for 700 megawatts (MW) of solar and wind energy generation assets last week, there was a collective scramble by the renewable energy industry to examine its contents.
This was, after all, the much-anticipated launch of the kingdom’s planned 9.5-gigawatt (GW) renewable energy program, one of the largest opportunities available to the industry today.
On the day that the RFQ was released, His Excellency Khalid A. Al Falih, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, reiterated his goal to make the program “the most attractive, competitive, and well-executed” of its kind in the world.
What’s more, is that his comments were backed by an RFQ that is clearly designed to ensure that only the industry’s most financially and technologically credible players make it to the next stage in the procurement process.
For those of us in the renewable energy business who have consistently engaged with numerous stakeholders in the kingdom over the past few years, this was a welcome assurance from the highest levels of government.
It was also apparent that Saudi Arabia, with the support of its advisors, is making a concerted effort to avoid the pitfalls that other fast-emerging markets have had to endure when rapidly ramping up their renewable energy portfolios.
For instance, by putting in place stringent pre-qualification criteria, the kingdom is, in effect, avoiding the risk associated with inadvertently including inexperienced, unqualified bidders in the procurement process.
Critically, there are indications that the later stages of the process will mandate that bidders source their technology from bankable, top-tier suppliers that have the financial strength to stand behind their performance guarantees and product warranties.
At a time when the stability of a number of photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturers is being called into question, this will, once again, lower risks while boosting the financial credibility of the assets being added to the programme.
There is other evidence that the kingdom is effectively managing risk, the size of the tender being the most apparent one. While REPDO could just as easily have tendered larger projects, it has prudently chosen project sizes that allow for important learnings to be carried forward through the remaining phases of the programme, while also sufficiently benefiting from the economies of scale.
It has also underpinned the programme’s success by funneling it through a single department — REPDO is an office of the Saudi Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources — rather than the previous approach of giving numerous stakeholders the task of executing.
It is clear that the tender for 300MW–700MW of solar PV and 400MW of wind is just the beginning, with immediate plans to rapidly scale the kingdom’s renewable energy portfolio to just over one-third of the 9.5GW target.
Our hope is that, in order to supplement the focus on utility-scale power generation, Saudi Arabia will also take a closer look at tapping into the potential for large commercial and industrial (C&I) solar applications. An evolutionary step towards Saudi Arabia’s renewable energy goals would be the implementation of ‘wheeling’ policies that will allow independent power producers that own renewable energy assets to supply clean electricity to their customers using the state-owned grid.
Hypothetically speaking, in such a scenario a privately-owned solar power plant could sign a commercial Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with a petrochemical processing facility or a large dairy farm located 100 kilometres away. The solar power plant will supply electricity to the national grid, offsetting the conventionally generated energy consumed by the petrochemical facility or farm, while the grid operator benefits financially from a wheeling fee.
If structured well, such a program could provide the incentive needed to remove energy subsidies for certain industries, while allowing them to benefit from the new economic realities of solar electricity.
Mature renewable markets that have successfully initiated their own energy transitions will testify to the fact that a multi-pronged approach is needed to deliver on targets and to do so cost-effectively; in a majority of instances, a multi-pronged strategy includes utility-scale, small-scale residential, and C&I-focused programs.
It is now evident that Saudi Arabia has a credible renewable energy program that is designed to ensure that the country builds up a reliable, cost-competitive portfolio of world-class power generation assets. It has achieved this at its own pace, undeterred by the naysayers and speculators, and there is no doubt in my mind that its success will be underpinned by a determination to achieve its well-defined goals, but also to set new benchmarks in terms of competitiveness, commercial attractiveness and execution.
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/why-...able-energy-programme-is-credible-664655.html
No mention of Morocco's massive solar energy complex?
Noor 1
Ouarzazate Solar Power Station (OSPS) – Phase 1, also referred to as
Noor 1 CSP, has an installed capacity of 160
MW. It was connected to the Moroccan power grid on 5 February 2016. It covers 450 hectares (1,112 acres) and is expected to deliver 370
GWh per year. The plant is a
parabolic trough type with a molten salt storage for 3 hours of low-light producing capacity.
The cost of the project when it began operations was $3.9 billion. It uses half a million mirrors.
The design uses wet cooling and the need to regularly clean the reflectors means that the water use is high – 1.7 million m3 per year or 4.6 liters per
kWh. Water usage is more than double the water usage of a wet-cooled coal power station and 23x the water use per kWh of a dry-cooled coal power station, though life-cycle
greenhouse gas emissions of solar thermal plants show that generating comparable energy from coal typically releases around 20 times more carbon dioxide than renewable sources.
The electricity was to be sold at $0.19 /kWh.
That is half a million of these parabolic mirrors
Noor 2
Noor 2 CSP is being built as the second part of the Ouarzazate Solar Power Station. It will be a 200
MW CSP solar project using parabolic trough and with 7 hours energy storage.
[15] It covers an area of 680 hectares (1,680 acres) and is expected to supply 600 GWh per year. Construction started in February 2016 and is expected to be complete by end of 2017.
It will use a dry cooling system to decrease water use.
Noor 3
Noor 3 on the right and Noor 2 on the left.
Noor 3 CSP is being built as the third part of the Ouarzazate Solar Power Station. It will be a 150 MW (gross) CSP solar project using a
solar power tower with 8 hours energy storage.
[18] It covers an area of 750 hectares (1,853 acres) and it is expected to supply 500 GWh per year.
[16] It will use a dry cooling system to decrease water use.
[17]
The 225-meter tall solar tower
Noor 4
Noor 4 will be an 80 MW
Photovoltaic power station.
All of the stages from space:
Moroccan Solar agency settles on China, Saudi Arabia for major solar project
Nov 17, 2016
Moroccan Solar agency (MASEN) has chosen
Saudi Arabian power engineering companyACWA Power and China’s Chint group to establish three solar plants with a joint capacity of 170MW as part of the NOOR PV I project in Morocco.
This is the first solar PV phase of the NOOR Solar Plan, which has already seen three major concentrated solar power (CSP) projects in Quarzazate
With ACWA Power leading and Chint delivering technical support, the two companies will design, finance, build, manage, and maintain the NOOR PV I program, having been chosen through an international call for bids.
MASEN said the tariff will be placed at US$0.046.
Also read:Europe Union to fund mega solar plant in Morocco
ACWA Power has won a variety of capacities in the Middle East over the past 18 months mostly with world –beating solar tariffs.
MASEN also signed contracts with
KfW bank for US $64 M to aid funding the project. The three projects will also be funded by the first green bonds in Morocco, set to be issued by MASEN for a figure of US $ 114 M and countersigned by Al Barid Bank, Attijariwafa Bank, the SCR, and the CMR.
The three intended PV plants include:
- NOOR Ouarzazate IV, 70MW
- NOOR Laayoune, 80MW
- NOOR Boujdour, 20MW
MASEN president Mustapha Bakkoury said: “With these three solar plants, MASEN goes on to enlarge its portfolio of multi-technology projects, constantly with the aim of taking action in the best means possible to the needs of our client and partner, ONEE (the National Agency for Electricity and Drinking Water).
This is also the consolidation of long-standing partnerships, both with the KfW, which is funding the fourth and final phase of the Ouarzazate complex, and with ACWA Power, and it reassures us that we will develop projects meeting international standards at Ouarzazate, Laayoune, and Boujdour.”
All projects are estimated to be done by 2019. They are part of the nation’s wider Solar Energy Programme which has an motivated goal of attaining 2GW of solar energy capacity by 2020.
ACWA Power currently launched a new division that will compile its present renewable-energy portfolio
https://constructionreviewonline.co...n-china-saudi-arabia-for-major-solar-project/
All the best to our brothers and sisters in Morocco. Hopefully this will make Morocco more independent in terms of energy. Yes, I am looking at you Djazair!
to 
Avoid the Persians and Saudis if they get into a cat fight. It can get intense
Although, even that has it's drawbacks as wind is generally temperamental and is a very inconsistent cycle, so production becomes very uneven. If they find ways to place them at higher altitudes where wind is much more consistent, they would also produce a more consistent rate. However, higher altitudes also means greater distances from developed areas so the transfer of that energy becomes difficult. But wind is certainly expanding very fast, but might not keep up with PV solar. Those parabolic mirrors in Morocco are amazing.
