Vast solar power plant gets ‘significant’ investment from China’s Silk Road Fund

• The 700 megawatt Dubai Electricity and Water Authority Concentrated Solar Power project represents the fourth phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.
• The solar park has a planned capacity of 1,000 megawatts by 2020 and 5,000 MW by 2030.

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China’s Silk Road Fund is to acquire a 24 percent stake in a large scale solar power project in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it was announced Sunday.  

The 700 megawatt Dubai Electricity and Water Authority Concentrated Solar Power (DEWA CSP) project represents the fourth phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the biggest single-site solar park on the planet. 

The DEWA CSP project was awarded to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power in 2017. ACWA Power, which develops, owns and operates power generation and water desalination plants, said the plant was expected to save 2.4 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

“The introduction of a new investor into the DEWA CSP is absolutely in line with ACWA Power’s established strategy of sharing investments with value adding partners who will in turn bolster our projects,” Paddy Padmanathan, ACWA Power’s CEO, said in a statement.

“We could not have found a more capable partner than Silk Road Fund to complement DEWA and us on what is the largest single renewable energy project underway in the world today,” he added.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park has a planned capacity of 1,000 megawatts (MW) by 2020 and 5,000 MW by 2030. It will use both photovoltaic and concentrated solar power technology to generate energy and will help to cut CO2 emissions by more than 6.5 million tons per year, according to DEWA.