Arctech, the world's leading tracking, racking, and BIPV solutions provider, announced that it had signed a 2.1 gigawatt trackers supply agreement with China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC) on 3rd September 2021, for Al Dhafra PV2 PV power plant in Abu Dhabi, UAE. When completed, the plant will be the largest of its kind in the Middle East, and can supply enough electricity to power around160,000 local families while offsetting emissions by more than 3.6 million tons of Carbon dioxide per year.
The project site is abundant in sunlight; however, its inclement natural conditions of high temperature, raging sandstorms and highly corrosive environment propose harsh requirements for the reliability of tracking systems. After a thorough assessment, Arctech was selected as the tracker supplier and the project will adopt Arctech's flagship product SkySmart II, the 1st IEC-certificated multi-point parallel drive tracking system, which can cope with the harsh natural environment and reduce the cost per KWh of the project significantly.
At the supply agreement signing ceremony, Arctech and CMEC also signed a framework agreement on strategic cooperation. Under the agreement, 2 companies will strengthen detailed cooperation in global markets based on mutual benefits and win-win principles.
"Founded in 1978, CMEC is a core subsidiary of China National Machinery Industry Corporation Ltd, a Global Fortune 500 company, and China's 1st industrial and trading company. As a world renowned EPC, it enjoys more than 40 years of experience in the international engineering industry with business covering more than 47 countries and regions worldwide," said Yan Weihua, General Manager of the 4th Complete Plants Division at CMEC. "We are excited to work with Arctech again for another benchmark project under the Belt and Road Initiative. In the future, we will further expand the comprehensive cooperation with Arctech, especially in solar energy, BIPV, and other new energy projects, for resources sharing and advantages complement, improving the global competitiveness ultimately."
Being one of the major suppliers of CMEC, Arctech has partnered with CMEC on various PV projects. "To win the largest PV project in the Middle East, Arctech invested thousands of hours of engineer resources from offices in China, UAE, and Spain, analysed dozens of tracking system configurations, and submitted more than 30,000 pages of technical documents. Fortunately, our efforts were highly recognized by CMEC and all the relevant parties, for which I'm truly grateful for their trust and support and show my appreciation to our technical, sales, and project teams for their hard work." said Guy Rong, President of Global Business at Arctech. "Now it's time to deliver our commitments to product quality, on-time delivery and services. We believe the project will be successfully connected to the grid on time. Meanwhile, the framework agreement signed today also shows that Arctech and CMEC share extensive common interests and cooperation intentions. We will actively strive to expand cooperation in more new energy projects and create more values by applying innovative technologies."