Saudi Arabia’s International Company for Water and Power Projects or ACWA Power, has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for the 100-MW Nukus wind farm that will be built in the northwest of Uzbekistan. Under the PPA, Nukus Wind JSC National Electric Grid of Uzbekistan (NEGU) will procure the electricity from the wind farm expected to total about 350 million kWh per year for a period of 25 years. The Riyadh-based company in September won a tender to build a wind farm in Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan region, offering a tariff of USD 0.025695 per kWh. The project will cost USD 108 million (EUR 95.32m). The Nukus wind park is scheduled to start operation in less than two years and is the first wind project to be developed through a public tendering process in the Central Asian country. The agreement with NEGU will have a financial impact on ACWA Power’s performance from the first quarter of 2024 onward.
This is the latest in a series of deals for ACWA Power in Uzbekistan this year. The project developer, which went public on the Saudi stock market earlier this year, agreed in May to build and operate a 1.5-GW single-site wind complex which will help the country boost its renewable energy capacity to 25% by 2030. Earlier in 2021, ACWA Power signed two PPAs and investment deals for two wind projects in Bukhara and Navoi with a combined capacity of 1,000 MW.