Dh1b Dubai solar park phase 2 tender opened by Dewa

Dubai: Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) opened the tender for developers to begin the second phase of Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, worth Dh1 billion.

Launching phase two of the project will see the next stage of construction of a 100-megawatt installation to be built in public private partnership with Solar First.

During the first day of Dubai Water, Energy, Technology and Environment Exhibition (WETEX) 2014, in Dubai on Monday, Saeed Mohammad Al Tayer, MD and CEO of Dewa announced the tender’s opening for the expansion project of the solar park.

“The second phase of the Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park will be included as one of the main expansion projects for Dewa this year which will increase capacity from 13 mega watt to 113 mega watt while the park will produce 1000MW by 2030,” Al Tayer said in his address speech at the Developer Conference during Wetex.

The expanded solar project will be commissioned by 2017, he added.

The solar project is part of the emirate’s plan to diversify its energy mix and reduce dependency on oil and gas.

“This second project of the solar park is one of these most important projects that use sustainable sources of renewable energy,” he said.

This project aims to promote the long term national initiative launched by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister and Vice-President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, under the theme of “Green Economy For Sustainable Development” to achieve sustainable development in the UAE.

He added that the importance of this leading project is that it is the first of its kind in terms of production capacity, and it is one of the series of promising projects to use renewable sources of energy to produce electricity in Dubai in accordance with the global state-of-the-art technologies. Dewa is working on spreading awareness among consumers about the advantages of solar energy usage, and encouraging the private sector to invest in the solar energy projects in Dubai to provide clean-energy solutions to efficiently meet the future requirements and develop a reduced carbon-footprint economy, Al Tayer added.