Map of Saudi Arabia. Image: iStock.

By Jason Deign

A decision to delay the world’s largest solar investment programme might have an unexpected upside for CSP if Saudi Arabia gets serious about innovation.

Last month the Arab state said it would be putting back its ambitious renewable procurement plan by eight years “to assess what technologies it will use,” according to Bloomberg.

The plan was originally intended to support the introduction of 41GW of solar power over three procurement rounds, with a first 600MW allocation being split half-and-half between CSP and PV.

Overall the USD$109 billion programme would have supplied a third of the nation’s electricity from solar by 2032. The timeframe has now been postponed to 2040, said Hashim Yamani, president of the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy.

However, while the announcement is a blow for project developers eyeing the market there are some reasons to suspect that the delay might benefit CSP innovation in the long run.

One of the motives for the setback is thought to be that Saudi Arabia is anxious to focus on renewable energy technologies that will help create local employment.

“One of the key benefits they want to capture is industrialisation and knowledge development,” Paddy Padmanathan, chief executive officer of ACWA Power International, told Bloomberg.

“If they are going to invest so much in this sector they want to make sure they have the whole value chain.”

Home-grown technologies

When it comes to CSP, this could mean the Saudi government will be keen to invest in home-grown technologies rather than simply buy in expertise from abroad.

And although the country has yet to emerge as a significant CSP market, there are some early signs of interest in plant designs that are far from the mainstream elsewhere.

The two major projects already announced for the country, Waad Al Shamal and Duba 1, are both integrated solar combined cycle (ISCC) plants. While tipped to be a popular format in the Middle East and North Africa, ISCC nevertheless remains somewhat of a rarity in the industry.

A potential advantage of the design for Saudi Arabian policymakers is that the bulk of each plant is effectively a traditional combined cycle gas turbine, which can easily be made using native expertise.

Saudi Arabia is also home to a couple of innovative linear Fresnel concepts.

In 2013, King Saud University (KSU) unveiled a point focus Fresnel collector that the Desertec Foundation said “has strong potential to provide a highly efficient and cost-effective solution for a wide range of applications.”

The same year, Hitachi Zosen completed a demonstration plant in Al-Jubail to show off its Hitz Super Low Profile Fresnel technology. It is thought the technology could be used for a hybrid power tower and linear Fresnel plant design planned by Babcock-Hitachi in Japan.

These developments come at a time when linear Fresnel increasingly appears to be getting edged out of the CSP market elsewhere. AREVA, the biggest company espousing Fresnel designs, dropped out of the CSP industry last year.

Financial difficulties

Novatec Solar, the only other major player backing the technology, is bidding on Duba 1 but faces financial difficulties. It called a meeting with investors last December to postpone repayment of bonds due this year, according to German press reports.

Despite this, linear Fresnel remains a relatively tried-and-tested technology. And it is one that could be attractive for the creation of a native supply chain because it is relatively simple to build compared to parabolic trough or power tower plants.

Finally, another CSP rarity that could have potential in Saudi Arabia is dish Stirling. While dish technology has steadfastly defied almost all attempts at commercialisation, one of its few remaining developers, Cleanergy of Sweden, has sights set on the Middle East.

The company is currently putting the finishing touches to a demo park of 10 dish units Dubai, with a view to showcasing the technology across the region. Saudi Arabia looks set to be a key market, says chief commercial officer Alexander Vestin.

“Regarding novel CSP technologies, I think that they have no other choice if they should succeed in the localisation ambitions they stated,” he said. “Stirling dish, for instance, can from day one supply more than 60% of the system components locally.

“This is something I believe is more difficult for other technologies to accomplish in a short period of time, or with limited pipeline of projects.”

Professor Hany Al-Ansary, chairman of KSU’s Mechanical Engineering Department, agrees the scene could be set for Saudi Arabia to become something of a proving ground for new and unusual CSP technologies.

“I fully agree that Saudi Arabia is well suited to have different CSP technologies tested,” he says. “There is so much variety in climatic conditions and solar resources, and there is also the unique challenge of dust of different types. This combination is hard to find elsewhere.”