The largest solar park for a project to produce desalinated drinking water

The problem of access drinking water is also being experienced, with increasing concern, by the populations who inhabit territories and nations that historically had an abundance of rainfall and had no shortage of water in the groundwater.

Climate change has discovered the great problem of the shortage of a fundamental resource in our life, which is drinking water, a problem that we had relegated to our minds as belonging to the geographical areas where rainfall had always been scarce or absent.

To make water available all year round, in dry areas (which are or will become), desalination of the water of the sea, through plants that need a lot of energy.

In the perspective of decarbonization, this energy must come from renewable sources, so that the environmental impact is zero, thus using wind energy or solar.

According to reports from TotalEnergy, the company has signed an agreement with Veolia to start construction of the largest solar photovoltaic (PV) park, which supplies energy for a desalination plant in Oman, in the city of Sur.

The plant will be located on the Sharqiyah desalination site, an important point in Oman and the Gulf region, which provides drinking water to over 600,000 inhabitants.

This 17 megawatt peak (MWp) solar project will be the first of its kind to be installed in the region. It annually produces over 30,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of green electricity, or more than a third of the desalination plant's daily consumption, thus avoiding nearly 300,000 tons of CO2 emissions.

This is in line with Oman's national energy strategy to convert 30% of its electricity consumption to renewable sources by 2030.

The plant will be equipped with over 32,000 high-efficiency solar panels and will use an innovative east-west tracking system to increase energy production.

“At Veolia, we are committed to bringing ecological transformation in the water sector for our customers, we are happy to start construction of the solar plant on our desalination in the city of Sur, in order to power it with green electricity, drastically reducing its carbon footprint, said Estelle Brachlianoff, CEO of Veolia.

As one of the key players in Oman's water sector, Veolia is fully committed to achieving the sustainability goals of Oman's Vision 2040, for the country's communities and industries and our solar project with TotalEnergies goes in this direction. ".

“This project is in line with our strategy to develop renewable energy in the Middle East and provide our customers with clean, reliable and affordable energy solutions.

We are committed to helping Veolia decarbonise its activities, based on our solid experience in implementing renewable energy solutions in highly technical and complex structures.

As a global multi-energy company, our goal is to contribute to the development of renewable energy in Oman and its region, " said Vincent Stoquart, Senior Vice President Renewables of TotalEnergies.

Veolia is implementing solutions to optimize the energy efficiency of its desalination activities, including its Sharqiyah desalination plant.

The Group, in collaboration with TotalEnergies, has decided to take a further step towards green transformation, using renewable energies to power the plant instead of fuels fossils.

TotalEnergies aims to assist producing countries in building a more sustainable future, through better use of the country's natural resources, including solar energy, which will improve directly the accessibility of cleaner, more reliable and more convenient electricity.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.