UAE to help fund Oman wind farm project

14 October 2014

Wind farm would be first major renewable scheme in the sultanate

The UAE will help fund a $125m wind farm planned in Oman’s southern Dhofar governorate, which will be the largest renewable project in the sultanate.

The wind farm, which is planned to be located in Harweel in Dhofar, will have a capacity of about 50MW, and is planned to begin operating in early 2017.

Around 15 to 20 wind turbines of 2MW to 3.2MW will be installed over a total area of 200,000 square metres at Harweel.

The state-owned Rural Areas Electricity Company (Raeco) is the client for the scheme, which will coordinated by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) and will receive funding from the Abu Dhabi government. Raeco will take over operations of the wind project three years after its construction.

Raeco is also planning to launch several smaller renewable energy projects in 2015, which will include five solar schemes and two wind power plants.

The project is part of Muscat’s efforts to integrate renewable energy into plans to boost generation capacity to deal with the rapidly growing demand for electricity in the sultanate.

In its 2014-20 7-year report, the Oman Power & Water Procurement Company (OPWP) revealed that it is planning to develop one or more solar plants as IPPs with a capacity of 200MW in this period, subject to government approval. The tendering process for the project(s) are provisionally planned to be initiated in 2015, with a commissioning date of 2018. The projects are planned to be located in sites near Adam or Manah.

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