Indian company wins contract for Saudi solar plant

Mumbai-headquartered Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has secured a contract to build the Sudair solar PV project in Saudi Arabia.

The renewables arm of L&T’s power transmission and distribution business has bagged the turnkey engineering, procurement, and construction contract for the Riyadh plant, which has a total capacity of 1.5 gigawatts — the biggest in the world.

“The project that is coming up in Riyadh province has a 30.8 square kilometer land parcel available to install a total capacity of 1.5GW PV solar modules with associated single axial tracker and inverters,” the company said in a statement.

The Public Investment Fund (PIF) solar project is part of the Kingdom’s push to invest in renew- able energy. It is also part of the PIF’s 70 percent target capacity of 58.7 gigawatts.

A consortium with ACWA Power, which is 50 percent owned by PIF, and Badeel, will invest SR3.4 billion ($907 million) in the 1.5-GW solar PV project.

The first phase of the project is expected to begin producing electricity during the second half of 2022 at the second-lowest price ever achieved globally for a solar PV project, 1.239 cents per KWh.

The plant will meet the energy needs of 185,000 houses and reduce carbon emissions by about 2.9 tons annually.

The announcement came during the inauguration ceremony of the 300-MW Sakaka solar power plant sponsored by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week where he announced seven new solar projects located in Madinah, Sudair, Qurayyat, Shuaiba, Jeddah, Rabigh and Rafha.