Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) said its consortium with French group EDF Renewables has achieved a major construction milestone at its 400MW utility-scale wind farm project in Saudi Arabia with the arrival of 20 wind turbines at Duba Port. 

 

Dumat Al Jandal will be Saudi Arabia’s first wind farm and the largest in the Middle East when completed. Construction began last August and commercial operations are due to start in the first quarter of 2022.

 

Once fully operational, the wind farm will power up to 70,000 Saudi households, while displacing around 988,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, said the statement from Masdar.

 

The Renewable Energy Project Development Office of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy awarded the $500 million Dumat Al Jandal wind farm to the EDF Renewables-Masdar consortium in January 2019, following a competitive tender in which it had submitted the lowest bid of $21.3 per MW hour.

 

Vestas, a leading wind turbine company, is responsible for the project’s engineering, procurement and construction contract, while TSK is handling the balance of plant and Al Babtain Contracting Company providing the substations and high-voltage solutions, it added.

 

The turbines comprising towers, blades and nacelles will be assembled at the Dumat Al Jandal site, located 900km north of Riyadh, in the Al Jouf region of Saudi Arabia, it stated.

 

A total of 99 Vestas V150-4.2MW wind turbines will be installed, with a hub height of 130 m and rotor diametre of 150 m, it added.

 

The tariff was further improved to $19.9/MWh at financial close, making Dumat Al Jandal the most cost-efficient wind project anywhere in the world.

 

The wind farm will supply electricity according to a 20-year power purchase agreement to the Saudi Power Procurement Company.

 

A subsidiary of the Saudi Electricity Company, SPPC is responsible for purchasing the entire production of the Dumat Al Jandal project.

 

"Dumat Al Jandal is our first wind energy project producing electricity at scale and as a key project under the King Salman Renewable Energy Initiative, it is playing a key role in diversifying Saudi Arabia's power mix sustainably," stated its CEO Osama bin Abdulwahab Khawandanah.

 

"The wind farm project reflects our strong partnership with the private sector and the commercial viability of wind energy, which is enabling us to establish a competitive renewable energy sector in the kingdom while reducing our carbon emissions in line with the Vision 2030," he added.

 

EDF Renewables’ International Executive VP Frédéric Belloy said: "This key construction milestone, in the largest wind farm of Middle East, highlights the progress achieved in the delivery phase of the project by the consortium and its suppliers, thanks to the support of the kingdom’s authorities and entities in charge of implementing the National Renewable Energy Programme."

 

Masdar CEO Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi said that the delivery of the first batch of wind turbines is a significant landmark in the development of the Dumat Al Jandal wind farm and the realisation of Saudi Arabia’s wider renewable energy programme, "to which we are fully committed with our partners."-TradeArabia News Service