Gestamp Solar signs $28 million contract with Kuwait Oil for 10 MW PV plant

The solar farm is the Spanish company’s first project in Kuwait and in the Middle East. It is scheduled to be completed by the middle of 2015.

Spain’s Gestamp Solar has signed a $28 million contract with Kuwait Oil Company to build the first utility-scale PV plant in Kuwait.

Gestamp Solar, the photovoltaic energy division of Gestamp Renewables, will engineer, construct, operate and oversee maintenance of the 10 MW Umm Gudair Field solar plant.

Kuwait Oil is a subsidiary of the state-owned Kuwait  Petroleum Corporation and the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter.

The installation is Gestamp Solar’s  first project in Kuwait and in the Middle East. It is scheduled to be completed by the middle of 2015. The facility will have more than 32,000 and 12 transformation centers. Gestamp Solar estimates annual electricity production to reach 17,600 megawatt hours, equal to the emission of 9,100 tons of CO2.

Gestamp Solar teamed up with corporate affiliate Solar Steel by Gonvarri as a supplier of one-axis trackers for the project. The group is part of Gonvarri Steel Services, which, like Gestamp Renewables, is a division of the Corporacion Gestamp conglomerate.

Gestamp Solar has until now focused on the development, construction, operation and maintenance of solar power plants in the United States, India, South Africa, Latin America, China, Japan, Italy, France and Spain. To date it has developed over 500 MWs of solar energy projects.

The Kuwaiti project is the latest example of major oil producers increasingly turning to solar power for its operations. Last month the country of Oman and Royal Dutch Shell announced a $53 million investment in California’s GlassPoint Solar.