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Firms await Al-Sila wind prequalification results

12 February 2025

Regional and international utility developers and investors are awaiting the result of the evaluation of prequalification applications for a contract to develop a 140MW wind power project in Abu Dhabi.

MEED understands interested firms submitted their statements of qualifications (SOQs) for the project in early December.

Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Water & Electricity Company (Ewec) issued an expression of interest request for the new wind power farm in Al-Sila in October last year and received responses in November. 

The Al-Sila wind scheme is a greenfield renewable energy project with a generation capacity of up to 140MW. When fully operational, it will more than double the existing wind generation capacity in the UAE.

Companies understood to have submitted an EoI include Japan’s Marubeni Corporation and Jera, France’s Engie and EDF Renewables, Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power and Alfanar, and Beijing-based PowerChina, among others.

The Al-Sila wind project will involve the development, financing, construction, operation, maintenance and ownership of the wind farm and associated infrastructure. 

The project will follow Abu Dhabi’s independent power project (IPP) model, where developers enter into a long-term power-purchase agreement with Ewec as the sole procurer of electricity. 

Ewec expects the project to generate enough clean electricity to power 36,000 homes, displacing 190,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

It will also directly contribute to Abu Dhabi’s Clean Energy Strategic Target 2035, which calls for 60% of electricity production to be generated by renewable and clean sources. 

Together with the existing UAE wind assets, the new project will increase the UAE’s wind generation capacity to approximately 240MW, laying the foundation for further wind energy expansion, according to Ewec’s Statement of Future Capacity Requirements report.

In October last year, Ewec and Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) signed a power-purchase agreement for several wind power plants in Abu Dhabi and Fujairah, with a combined capacity of over 100MW.

Their locations and capacities are:

  • Sir Baniyas Island (Abu Dhabi): 45MW
  • Delma Island (Abu Dhabi): 27MW
  • Al-Sila Abu Dhabi: 27MW
  • Al-Halah (Fujairah): 4.5MW

Masdar developed the 103.5MW wind power projects, which use “the latest technology and innovation to capture low wind speeds at utility scale, adopting advances in material science and aerodynamics to make wind power possible in the country”.

The Al-Sila wind farm takes to six the total number of IPPs under various procurement stages in Abu Dhabi. The other schemes are:

  • Taweelah C combined-cycle gas turbine plant: 2,500MW
  • Madinat Zayed open-cycle gas turbine plant: 1,500MW
  • Al-Khazna solar IPP: 1,500MW
  • Al-Zarraf solar IPP: 1,500MW
  • Battery energy storage system (Bess) 1: 400MW

These IPPs have a total combined capacity of over 7,000MW. 

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Jennifer Aguinaldo

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