Saudi Arabia begins transition to solar energy

In early 2023, ACWA Power announced that it would officially start business in the Chinese market, signing more than 1GW of renewable energy project agreements in multiple provinces. Among them, the company signed its first agreement with a subsidiary of Sungrow Power Supply to jointly operate 132MW of solar photovoltaic assets in Guangdong Province.

This city, which has always been famous for its oil resources, is also blessed with solar energy resources and has obvious advantages in using sunlight as energy. Since more than half of the country's land area is desert, the average daily sunshine time is 8.9 hours, the horizontal solar radiation is 5.6kW·h/m², and the solar irradiance is 250W/m², which is higher than the average indicator of 100W-200W/m² for high-potential regions in the global development of the solar industry.

In addition, favorable government policies, meeting energy needs through renewable energy, and reducing dependence on fossil fuels have also greatly promoted the development of Saudi Arabia's solar industry.

Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan once said in an interview, "China is a global leader in green industries and renewable energy, and has many new technologies in automobiles, batteries, and robots that have attracted global attention. Saudi Arabia is working hard to expand its cooperation with China and learn advanced Chinese technology. It can be seen that China's great achievements in the photovoltaic field are of great attraction to Saudi Arabia, which does not want to rely on oil. The ambition behind Saudi Arabia is not to simply purchase photovoltaic components, but to fully introduce and absorb the photovoltaic industry chain with advanced components.