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Page added on February 1, 2013
Saudi Arabia Completes Its Biggest Solar Power Plant
Saudi Arabia completed its biggest ground-mounted photovoltaic plant as the world’s largest crude oil exporter seeks to generate a third of its electricity with energy from the sun by 2032.
Germany’s Phoenix Solar AG (PS4) developed the 3.5-megawatt plant in Riyadh that uses 12,684 panels from China’s Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (STP) and inverters from SMA Solar Technology AG (S92), Phoenix Solar said in an e-mailed statement.
“This project represents an important milestone in the development of the solar industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Ron Shen, Suntech’s vice president of Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, said in a separate statement.
Saudi Arabia plans to boost renewable energy use as a way to pare back on oil consumption used for domestic desalinization and power plants, potentially saving 523,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day over the next 20 years. The country aims to have 41,000 megawatts of solar capacity within two decades, Maher al-Odan, a consultant at the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, said last year.
8 Comments on "Saudi Arabia Completes Its Biggest Solar Power Plant"
BillT on Fri, 1st Feb 2013 1:20 am
Considering that those panels and equipment will all have to be replaced before 2032, I doubt they will achieve their goals or anywhere close. More BS in the ‘news’. The lifetime of panels is about 20 years, especially in the desert. The converters are good for about 10 years but will need constant maintenance. Then there is the little fact of the coming Middle East civil wars, etc.
Shaved Monkey on Fri, 1st Feb 2013 1:30 am
More solar gives them more exspensive oil to sell.
Re; Middle East Civil Wars in Saudi the US will keep protecting them as long as they don’t interfere with the Zionists and keep selling oil.
BillT on Fri, 1st Feb 2013 4:56 am
Shaved monkey, you may be right about the protection, but China buys more Saudi oil than we do and they also have a say in it. The US is being edged out of the world trade slowly.
As for the Saudi’s, they are using about 6% more each year of the oil they do produce and they are producing less and less. By 2035, they will have not been exporting oil for at least a decade. If they survive the civil war that the US will not be able to prevent.
DC on Fri, 1st Feb 2013 5:23 am
3.5MW? Dont we have 1.5-5MW wind turbines now? And no, im not dissing solar! 3.5MW is tbh though, pathetic, and thats the largest installation they have to date? Even the Nevada Solar 1 is a 64-75MW facility, and thats in the US!, itself a world laggard when it comes to clean(er) energy.
Arthur on Fri, 1st Feb 2013 5:52 am
SA indirectly announces the end of the oil age by voting with its feet and run for the hills.
3.5 MW obviously is peanuts, but SA recently allocated a whopping 109 billion $ for solar investment. They should know best about the true state of their fields.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-10/saudi-arabia-plans-109-billion-boost-for-solar-power.html
Hopefully for SA they will find a constructor willing to accept $.
Kenz300 on Fri, 1st Feb 2013 3:58 pm
When top oil producing nations turn to wind and solar you know that the world is in transition to safe, clean alternative energy sources.
The transition has begun.
Wind and solar installations are growing around the world.
DC on Fri, 1st Feb 2013 4:52 pm
Ken haha, SA is doing this so they can free up more OIL to export to US SUV’s! Transition has little if anything to do with the motivation behind it. They want to buy a pile of nukes too, for exactly the same reason. Wheither SA late love affair with non-oil based energy comes to much of anything, ….well see.
Gale Whitaker on Sat, 2nd Feb 2013 7:45 pm
Everybody knows that wind and solar are a joke. You can’t produce or maintain the stuff without cheap oil. It’s more malarky that is designed to give the masses hope in a situation where there is no hope. S.A. would be smarter to start raising camels for sale. They need to go back to wandering in the desert.