Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC) has signed two power purchase agreements (PPAs) with a consortium led by top Japanese business conglomerate Marubeni Corporation to procure power from its key wind projects - 600MW AlGhat and 500MW Wa'ad Alshamal.
This comes as part of Round 4 of the Saudi National Renewable Energy Program (NREP) which is supervised by kingdom's Ministry of Energy.
The deals were signed by the principal buyer SPPC during the Saudi-Japan Vision 2030 Business Forum.
On the key achievement, Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Minister of Energy, said: "AlGat had achieved a new record low cost of electricity production from wind power at 1.56558 cents/kWh levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), while Wa'ad Alshamal project achieved a second world record low for wind power at 1.70187 cents/kWh LCOE."
The electricity produced from both projects, he stated, was sufficient to power 257,000 residential units per year, which emphasis the significance of these projects in enhancing the energy efficiency in Saudi Arabia.
Prince Abdulaziz commended the Saudi King Salman and His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Crown Prince, Prime Minister and the Chairman of the Supreme Committee for Energy Mix Affairs for Electricity Production and Enabling Renewable Energy Sector, for all the encouragement, support, enablement and follow up that the Ministry of Energy and its ecosystem receive from the Country’s leadership, to enable achieving the Vision 2030 targets in the energy sector.
He pointed out that these two projects were part of the National Renewable Energy Programme which is supervised by the Ministry of Energy and is an extension of the energy ecosystem's efforts towards realizing Vision 2030's objectives, achieving the optimal energy mix, and displacing liquid fuels in the kingdom's power sector.
Additionally, the programme utilises vast lands to harness renewable energy resources and increase the share of renewables in the energy mix to around 50% by 2030, he added.-TradeArabia News Service