The 2 GW Al Dhafra solar park covers an area of 21.5 square kilometers in the sandy suburb of Dhafra, near Abu Dhabi. pv magazine visited to learn more about the plant’s specifications and how it contributes to the local energy landscape.
It rarely rains in the Abu Dhabi desert, but then the heavens opened pv magazine visited in January to see the 2 GW Al Dhafra solar park. Local engineers tell us it is the world’s largest single-site solar power plant, producing enough energy to power 200,000 homes.
Some of the 3.8 million panels it contains are visible from the visitor center, but there is only so much that the human eye can see.
Fortunately the rain clears up and we get the chance to walk between the panels. The size of the factory means we have to be driven to the center of the park. It takes a few minutes.
When we step outside the van, we can hear the sound of the trackers – the panels are mounted on a total of 30,000 trackers.
The trackers have different modes including auto-tracking (follows the path of the sun with astronomical algorithm along with backtracking), wind mode (adapts to windy conditions), rain mode (stops at certain angles when it rains), cleaning mode (sets the panels in a specific corner for manual cleaning. The park has 2,000 cleaning robots) and horizontal mode (for maintenance).
Image: pv magazine
Monitoring such a monumental operation is a challenge. It has 20 weather monitoring stations and one million signal data points. Al Dhafra’s engineers rely on 8,000 string inverters that guarantee high uptime. These are made by Sungrow.
The factory has three different module specifications, using cells from TrinaSolar, Suntech and Jinko Solar. Trina’s TSM-DEG19C.20 modules have an efficiency of 21.20%; Suntech’s STPXXXS-C72/Pmh+ modules have an efficiency of 21.30%; and Jinko Solar’s N-type 72HL4-BDV modules offer an efficiency of 21.87%. They all come with a 30-year power warranty.
Inaugurated November 2023Al Dhafra is not the newest factory in Abu Dhabi. At the visitor center, the team tells PV Magazine that they are currently building the sixth solar power plant – Al Dhafra is ‘PV2’ in a series of huge utility-scale parks. They are all owned by different shareholders. Emirates Water and Electricity Co. (EWEC) is the buyer.
Image: EWEC
The managers of Al Dhafra, a consortium consisting of French energy giant EDF Renewables, Emirati state investor Masdar, and Chinese solar energy developer Jinko Power are ready to tell us all about the development of the park, its financing and the technology that supports its operation.
Abdulaziz Alobaidli, Chief Operating Officer of Masdar, pointed out that the development of the factory took place during the pandemic, which posed several challenges. That said, he explained that the perseverance of the engineering team allowed them to stay on track and add up to 10 MW of capacity in a single day.
Masdar, Alobaidli said, is at the forefront of renewable energy technology, with developments in more than 40 countries. “Our portfolio capacity is over 31 GW, and we have an ambitious target to reach 100 GW by 2030.”
Will this be possible? Alobaidli is hopeful. “This is a market where you can make progress very quickly, because much of the pre-development is already done by the government.” Unlike Europe, he means. However, Masdar is “market agnostic”.
CEO of EDF Renewables’ Middle East Oliver Bordes and Jinko Power’s VP International Tenders Mothana Qteishat both said their respective companies have been active in the Middle East market for about a decade.
EDF employs approximately 800 people in the region. “We really started developing our business here in the region maybe ten years ago, thanks to the IPP renewable energy market,” Bordes said.
“Since 2015, we have seen around 8 GW of projects in the region. Our first pillar is about developing a utility-scale pipeline, and our second pillar is about proposing solutions to manage the flexibility of the system, to manage intermittency. We propose batteries, pumped hydroelectric power stations and some pumped storage installations.”
EDF is also a “key player” in helping the UAE network operator develop and advance its network. “Every time they do interconnection studies, we contribute as technical experts,” he said of the grid operator.
The Middle East is an ideal location for EDF to focus its solar energy activities; the climate is both ecologically and financially hospitable. “This project is a laboratory of what we can do in the real world. So because there are large-scale projects, because the market is super competitive, which requires everyone to be super innovative, to work on the price… all of that is absolutely essential. We need to be in the Middle East because this is the first place where we can make progress and we can get ahead of what is happening.”
According to Qteishat, Jinko Power is busy participating in multiple tenders for both solar energy and storage projects in the Middle East.
“We have participated in almost all major tenders in the region. Our portfolio today consists of 5 projects, Saudi Arabia is one of our core markets in addition to the UAE.”
As Jinko Power, which has no real relationship with Al Dhafra module supplier Jinko Solar, enters the market in the next decade, the company aims to “continue creating at mega scale,” according to Qteishat.
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