UAE Takes a Stab at “World’s Largest Solar Plant”

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) rests in one of the sunniest regions in the world and is home to Abu Dhabi, one of the world’s most fascinating cities. Today, the UAE announced plans to build a 100-megawatt concentrated solar power (CSP) plant 120 kilometers (~75 miles) southwest of Abu Dhabi. When completed, the power plant will be the “world’s largest,” a claim heard often by admen all over the solar industry and the world’s eager-to-green governments.

As Inhabitat points out, the planned Desertec project, which aims to install hundreds of gigawatts of CSP, would make this UAE project look like a freckle on a giant’s back. But Desertec is many years from even finding all the money to finance the project, while UAE’s “Shams 1,” named after an Arabic word for sun, will begin construction this coming fall and should be complete within two years.

Shams 1 is being financed by three different entities: Masdar, a planned eco-city financed primarily by the UAE government, French multinational oil giant Total, and Spanish company Abengoa Solar. Masdar will own 60 percent of the power plant. Total and Abengoa will each get 20 percent. The plant will consist of 768 parabolic trough solar collectors provided by Abengoa Solar and will be equipped with a back-up natural gas boiler to provide energy when the sun is down.

Shams 1 will help UAE meet its goal of 7 percent renewable energy by 2020.

As to whether it will be the world’s largest, who knows? It obviously ignores SEGS in California’s Mojave Desert, which produces up to 354 MW of solar thermal electricity, I assume on the technicality that SEGS is actually nine solar power plants within the same facility.

Posted on June 11th in Solar News by Dan.