Solar/Water Projects Elsewhere

Acquasol's ambitious solar/water project will represent the largest-scale such project ever built anywhere in a standalone municipal-scale facility.

The closest approximation is a 5MW plant plant being developed in Jordan with the aim of desalinating five megalitres of water per day or about 1.7 gigalitres per year. The pilot project, however, will use only mutli-effects desalination with concentrating solar power providing only 25% of the energy. In later phases of the US $20 million project, the solar contribution is expected to be raised to 75%.

If the project goes well between now and 2010, a far larger follow-on endeavor is planned. Named the "Sana'a Solar Water project" it would be built in Yemen, a small country which occupies the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula neighboring Saudi Arabia. Yemen's national capital, Sana'a, has 2 million people and is faced with running out of groundwater within 10 years. The US$11 billion project would desalinate seawater from the Red Sea and pump it 250 kilometers inland to the capital. Powered by a 1,250 MW parabolic trough concentrating solar power field generating 10 gigawatt hours per year, the project envisages producing 1,000 gigalitres of water per year.