Register for MEED’s 14-day trial access 

Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Water & Electricity Company (Ewec) has issued an expression of interest notice to developers and developer consortiums for a new wind power farm in Al-Sila.

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, according to Ewec.

The utility expects to receive expressions of interest by 5 November. 

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 the model of Abu Dhabi’s independent power project (IPP) programme, 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 unawarded IPPs 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.