Dubai Municipality is planning to develop a floating solar power plant as part of its Jebel Ali stormwater network project.

The floating solar panels will be installed on a detention pond that forms part of the stormwater network project being built in the Jebel Ali area that will serve 40 per cent of the urban land area of Dubai, including Al-Maktoum International Airport and the Expo 2020 site.

The plan is to install 357,000 panels as eight floating islands that will have the total potential capacity of 100MW. The maximum generated electricity will be 170GW/h a year.

The solar panels are needed because the pond will be built near to Al-Maktoum International Airport, and large open bodies of water can be a danger as they attract birds that can interfere with aircraft. The panels will cover 73 per cent of the of the ponds surface area. The remainder of the area will be filled with balls floating on the surface that can easily move to suit the water levels within the pond.

The floating solar park is part of package 3 of the stormwater network along with stormwater pipelines. “It has not gone out to tender yet, However, the design is complete.” said Ismail Hassanien, principal engineer – projects, Dubai Municipality, speaking at IQPC’s Global Infrastructure Congress in Dubai on 2 April.

The procurement method for the solar component has not been decided by Dubai Municipality, and it could be delivered as a build, operate and transfer (BOT) scheme, or a traditional construction project. Dubai Municipality has favoured BOT for recent projects such as its waste-to-energy plant that was recently awarded to Belgium’s Besix and Switzerland’s Hitachi Zosen Innova.

Package 1 of the stormwater network covers the terminal pump station and outfall next to Jebel Ali Port. It was awarded to Greece’s Archirodon after it submitted a bid of AED998m ($272m) last year. The contract involves the construction of a pumping station 55 metres below ground that can pump water at 30 cubic metres a-second as well as various support buildings.

Package 2, which covers tunnels and shafts, was awarded to a joint venture of Austria’s Porr and Belgium’s Besix last year. Porr/Besix had submitted a bid of AED1.3bn ($356m) for the 12 kilometre-long section of tunnel.