The Shagaya Renewable Energy Park is located around an hour and a half drive from the city and it’s HUGE. To give you some perspective, if you drove at 100KM/h, it would take you around 5 minutes to get from one end to the other. Last week I was lucky enough to get permission from KISR to visit the project and get a tour of the different renewable energy resources Kuwait is currently experimenting with.
The Shagaya Park is part of Kuwait’s vision for producing up to 15% of the energy from renewable energy sources by the year 2030. The energy park is a small-scale pilot project where three different renewable energy sources were installed with the objective so to be able to asses medium term costs and performances, and be able to make decisions on which technology to be employed in future plants. The 3 renewable energy sources installed are:
10 MW Wind Farm
10 MW Photovoltaic Plant
50 MW Concentrated Solar Power Plant
The wind farm uses wind to turn turbines to produce the energy. The photovoltaic plant uses solar panels to convert sun light into electricity. Finally, the CSP plant uses mirrors to direct sunlight onto a central tube filled with oil which then heats up water which drives a steam turbine to produce electricity. The advantage of the CSP plant which I discovered on this tour is that it can continue to produce electricity even during the night. That’s because there are two large tanks filled with 33,000 tons of molten salt that store heat during the day, and then continue to produce energy at night.
All the power generated from the park is fed back into Kuwait’s power grid. Since the park has been operational for a few years, they’ve collected enough data to decide on moving forward by expanding the Photovoltaic Plant. Kuwait uses the most amount of energy from 12PM to 4PM in the summer which is also when the Photovoltaic Plant’s generate the most electricity. This is why the government recently launched a tender to build a 1.1GW photovoltaic plant which will be installed at the park.
You can’t access the park without permission from KISR, but if you want to drive to it and check out the wind farm from outside the park, here is the location on Google Maps.
14 replies on “Visiting the Shagaya Renewable Energy Park”
It’s interesting that in this region, wind farms and photovoltaic solar cells are still considered such advanced technology that it falls under the purview of research organizations like KISR, instead of the normal utility provider.
Also, can someone explain why MEW was renamed to MEWRE if KISR is producing the RE?
It’s only being researched because the same technology performs differently depending on the location. For example, after building the Photovoltaic Plant they learned that the ground was more stable than expected and so the next time they build the plant, they will be using less beams and save on material cost. Also the cost of importing items, setting up it, dealing with customs, the sand, heat etc.. all play a role and so they needed to collect this data on a small commercial scale before making a recommendation.
So who is the final deciding factor when it comes to review & green lighting this project , KISR or MEW ?
KISR is the consultant and partners with MEW. The 1.1GW plant is with MEW but KISR will continue as consultants.
Great thanks. Have any wasta or point of contact in either company ?
I just messaged them on instagram, no wasta
100 kph in 5 minutes = 8.3km
yup its 8km long
More interested in a post about that grey hilux adventure!
got a post for it here, https://248am.com/mark/information/hilux-everything-ive-done-so-far/
let me know what you want to know, I drove 40k last year up and down to dubai and riyadh so I’ve spent a lot of time with the car.
Just came here to say the Hilux looks great 🙂
lol thanks
Pardon my 🇫🇷 but from the sounds of it, it appears most Shaggy-tastic. What is Shagaya in Arabic ? 🧐
The word is Shagtastic not Shaggytastic! I doubt Shagaya has anything to do with shaggy or shagging 🧐😡