(Bloomberg) — Abengoa SA, a Spanish energy and environment
company, will develop the world’s largest solar-powered
desalination plant in Saudi Arabia with a local water firm.
The $130 million facility at Al Khafji City in the desert
kingdom’s northeast will desalinate 60,000 cubic meters of
seawater each day, ensuring a stable supply of drinking water
throughout the year, Abengoa said today in a statement. It will
build the project in partnership with Advanced Water Technology,
a new unit of state-owned technology company Taqnia.
The facility would be the first large-scale desalination
plant to be powered by solar energy, according to Seville-based
Abengoa. It includes a photovoltaic plant as well as systems to
lower power consumption and pre-treat the local seawater.
The works will increase Abengoa’s desalination capacity
around the world to almost 1.5 million cubic meters a day, or
enough to supply about 8.5 million people. In the Middle East,
the company has been awarded other major water projects such as
the Barka desalination plant in Oman as well as solar plants.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Marc Roca in London at
mroca6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Randall Hackley at
rhackley@bloomberg.net;
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net
Tony Barrett