The Emirates Water and Electricity Company (EWEC) has awarded the 2 GW Al Dhafra Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Independent Power Producer (IPP) project, which will be located in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates, UAE) to a consortium led by Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA) and Masdar (60% together), with partners EDF and JinkoPower (40% together). The winning consortium had offered a tariff of AED 4.97 fils/kWh (US$1.35c/kWh) on a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) basis. The project’s financial closure is expected to occur in the third quarter of 2020, enabling initial power generation in the first half of 2022 and full generation in the second half of 2022. Once operational, the Al Dhafra project will raise Abu Dhabi's solar PV capacity to 3,200 MW and will sell its power generation to EWEC under a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA).
EWEC launched the tender for the construction of the 2 GW solar PV project in February 2019 and received expressions of interest (EoIs) from 48 developers in July 2019. It prequalified 24 bidders to build the project and received 5 bids in November 2019. In April 2020, EWE unveiled technical and commercial bids from five consortia and announced that it had received the world's lowest price for solar PV with a bid of AED 0.497/kWh, i.e. US$1.35c/kWh on a levelised electricity cost (LEC) basis. This is about 44% lower than the tariff set in 2017 for the 1,200 MW Noor Abu Dhabi solar project (commissioned in April 2019).
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