GE Renewable Energy’s Grid Solutions has been awarded a contract to build a turnkey substation that will power the Yanbu-4 independent water producer plant (IWPP) located 140 km west of Madinah, near the town of Ar Rayyis on the Red Sea coast of the Kingdom. This project contributes to the Kingdom’s water infrastructure and meets Saudi Arabia’s goal to promote environmental sustainability.
This is the first integrated, seawater reverse osmosis project in the Kingdom that uses clean energy. Scheduled to be operational in 2023, Yanbu-4 will have a capacity of 450,000 cubic meters per day of freshwater to be supplied to households in Makkah and Madinah. The plant will include solar energy units generating 20 MW of power to reduce grid electricity consumption throughout the desalination process, as well as water storage tanks designed to maintain a capacity of two operational days.