With Saudi Arabia's National Renewable Energy Law to be set in the near future, the market for renewable resources is expected to open up with opportunities knocking around every corner. Saudi Electric Company has already made advantages in the market by inaugurating Saudi Arabia's first solar power plant on Farasan Island. One engineer from the Saudi electric company, Hamed Al Saggaf, explained, “This is a 500 KW Solar Power Plant Project (expandable to 6-8 MW) using CIS Solar Thin Film Technology from Solar Frontier of Japan. The plant started initially on July 5 and completely on August 18. Showa Shell Sekiyu (SSSKK) built the plant on a Built Own and Transfer (BOT) basis and shall transfer the plant to SEC after 15 years or less. SEC will operate and maintain the project. The plant is directly connected to SEC's distribution system.” With the implementing of the solar power plant, Saudi Electric Company will be able to record actual KWh (kilowatt per hour) output, rather then planned efficiency. Al Saggaf says this will help the company with its future plans for long term success. Also looking at future development, the company will be able to monitor the solar power plant, which will help with future investments with which materials to use, what questions to ask, and how to negotiate different terms and conditions that potentially weren't thought of during this business deal. The plant is said to reduce green house gases and emits no pollution. The company said it is interested in developing more eco-friendly means of obtaining renewable resources but that there are issues that need to be studied before the country makes any plans to shift to the use of large scale demands on solely renewable resources. Such issues include financial costs and sustainability. The Saudi government and other contractors are looking into projects such as expanding the soloar power plant to 8 MW (megawatts) and potentially to have hybrid solutions of diesel and solar production. On November 29-30, Saudi Electric Company will join CEOs and top level management of other MENA utilities including Egypt's EEHC, Tunisia's STEG, Algeria's Sonelgaz and Jordan's NEPCO at the Arab Renewable Energy Congress and side events in Jordan. Companies including SunEdison, Belectric, Abengoa, Skyfuel, Amonix and Siemens will join the discussions to further guide the region's energy policies and iron out concerns on how solar power can be successfully integrated into the region's power mix. The official conference of the Arab Renewable Energy Commission will be in Jordan of 2011 by HRH Prince Asem Bin Nayef, Adnan Badran, former Prime Minister of Jordan & Board Member of the Masdar Institute of Science & Technology. Designed as a business to business forum the conference will develop key action points for officials and key stakeholders to act upon to drive forward the sector's renewable energy market. BM
