Solar car park array becomes Saudi’s largest solar venture

4 Apr 2011

A car parking array has become the largest solar project ever installed in oil rich nation Saudi Arabia according to its developers, photovoltaic (PV) integrator Belectric and technology developer Sun & Life.

A large-scale PV carport system will cover 4,500 parking spaces at the recently built North Park offices of oil company Saudi Aramco in Dhahran when the project is complete.

Project engineer Belectric and Middle East solar pioneer Sun & Life, a subsidiary of Saudi power and water infrastructure developer Acwa, are responsible for installing the 10MW project.

The two companies said they plan to strengthen cooperation in the solar field to carry out full-scale joint venture engineering, procurement and contracting of solar plants in Saudi Arabia following the project.

Their collaboration at the North Park car park involves the installation of more than 120,000 copper indium selenide PV modules supplied by Japanese thin-film manufacturer Solar Frontier.

Saudi Arabia-based company Al Yamama built the car park at the North Park offices and was responsible for commissioning the solar project.

The companies said the solar project is expected to feed power into the national electricity grid by the end of the year.

Tags: solar