The plant will be the world’s largest solar PV IPP project, providing 110,000 Emirati homes with electricity LONDON: Bids have been received for what is set to become the world’s biggest solar power plant project covering 20 square kilometers of desert in Abu Dhabi. It is being built by Emirates Water and Electricity Company (EWEC), a unit of Abu Dhabi Power Corporation (ADPower). The bids cover the financing, construction, operation and maintenance of the 2 gigawatt project in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi. The plant will be the world’s largest solar PV IPP project, and provide up to 110,000 households across the UAE with electricity. “This year, EWEC has already delivered the world’s current largest single-site solar PV project, Noor Abu Dhabi, on time and on budget,” said EWEC CEO Othman Al-Ali. “We continue to deliver on our ambitious sustainable generation program, and this new plant is integral to our strategic plan to deliver on the clean energy mix outlined by the UAE Energy Strategy 2050.” It will be almost double the size of EWEC’s approximately 1.2 GW ‘Noor Abu Dhabi’ solar plant, the largest operational single-project solar PV plant in the world. Once operational, the plant will lift Abu Dhabi’s solar power capacity to around 3.2 GW, further reducing the emirate’s CO2 emissions by more than 1.6 million metric tons per year, EWEC said in a statement. As part of the tendering process issued in July 2019, an optional bid for significant battery storage was allowed.