China’s Shanghai Electric has appointed Spain’s Abengoa to provide concentrated solar power (CSP) technology and subcontracting services for the 700MW fourth phase of Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid (MBR) solar park in Dubai.

The value of work to be undertaken directly by Abengoa is about $650m, the Spanish firm revealed in a press statement. Abengoa will provide the technology for the planned three 200MW CSP parabolic troughs. The CSP project will also contain a 100MW CSP tower.

The lead developer for the CSP project is Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power. The developer was appointed by state utility Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) to develop the $3.8bn CSP plant in September last year for a levelised tariff of 7.3$cents a kilowatt hour ($c/kWh), the lowest unsubsidised tariff for utility-scale CSP solar in the world. Acwa Power signed the main EPC contract with Shanghai Electric in April.

The project will be commissioned in stages, starting in the fourth quarter of 2020. The plant will feature a combination of tower and parabolic trough technologies, which will collect heat and store it in molten salt to enable the supply of power during the night. The facility will contain the world’s tallest CSP tower, which is planned to be 260m.

The 700MW plant will be the first CSP project at the MBR park, with Dewa having set a target for the solar park to produce 1GW of CSP solar by 2030. The MBR scheme is planned to have a total capacity of 5,000MW, and will be the main contributor to the emirate’s goal for renewable energy to contribute 25 per cent of total power by 2030.