MENA

Diego Biasi, CEO of British investment firm Quercus, talks to pv magazine about the company’s plans to develop a 600 MW solar farm in Iran, which will not only be one of the biggest PV plants in the world but a seismic solar development for both the MENA region and Iran.

The recent Saudi Arabian tender for 300 MW of solar PV saw a bid of $0.0178/kWh – the lowest price by far yet seen globally. Aymen Grira of French energy consultancy Altran discusses this bid, and explores the wider PV potential of the MENA region.

The agreement will see the Spanish central inverter specialist ship its 1,000 Vdc Ingecon Sun PowerMax B series inverters to Sterling and Wilson, the EPC overseeing the construction of the Sweihan solar plant, which will be the world’s largest single-site solar park once complete.

The tender for $1.2 billion Dibdibah solar power plant will be issued in the first quarter of 2018, Bloomberg reports.

A few days after reporting on Jordan’s largest net metering PV system of 17 MW capacity, it appears that a new system of just 500 KW less capacity is also under way. Jordan’s commercial net metering PV sector appears to be on an encouraging upward trajectory.

The Saudi Renewable Energy Development Office (REPDO) has announced a shortlist of 27 companies that will be invited to submit proposals for 300 MW of solar PV commissioned as part of the first round of Saudi Arabia’s National Renewable Energy Program (NREP).

Hanwha Q Cells, Enphase Energy, Solarwatt and EDF are among the big names grabbing the headlines in a week where new product launches and new GW-scale tender details were revealed.

Götz Fischbeck, CEO of Smart Solar Consulting, discusses some key questions that have arisen from the recent 1 GW Konya solar tender, which was won by a Hanwha Q Cells-Kalyon Enerji joint venture at a price of $0.0699/kWh.

Gigawatts a-go-go this week as Turkey, Algeria and Vietnam all toy with those magical GWs, while in more mature markets German storage figures provided reasons for optimism and Blattner Energy took the top spot for U.S. EPCs.

The certification of a 5 MW solar PV plant in Jordan is the first of its kind in the Middle Eastern country and opens up new trade opportunities.