A consortium consisting of Masdar and EDF Renewables announced in 2019 that it had won the tender for the Dumat Al Jandal wind farm in Saudi Arabia. With an installed capacity of 400 megawatts (MW), it will be Saudi Arabia’s first wind farm and the largest in the Middle East.
Expected to be completed in 2022, the project will displace approximately one million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.
The wind farm will benefit from a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with the Saudi Power Procurement Company, a subsidiary of SEC (Saudi Electricity Company), the Saudi power generation and distribution company.
The Dumat Al Jandal project was awarded to the consortium by the Renewable Energy Project Development Office (REPDO) at the Saudi Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources (MEIM) following a call for tenders launched in August 2017. During a readout in Riyadh in July 2018, it was announced that the consortium submitted the most cost-competitive bid ($21.3 per MWh).
The wind farm will be located 900 kilometres from north of Riyadh in the Al Jouf region of north-western Saudi Arabia. The project is 51 per cent owned by EDF Renewables and 49 per cent owned by Masdar.