Abu Dhabi-based renewables developer Masdar has announced plans to expand an existing floating solar plant in Indonesia to up to 645MW, creating a monster array that would be one of the world’s largest.
Masdar announced today (Tuesday) that it has signed a deal to develop the second phase of its existing 145MW Cirata floating solar plant, already claimed to be the largest in the ASEAN group of Southeast Asian nations, adding up to 500MW of new capacity.
Masdar signed the joint venture agreement with PLN NP, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s state electricity company PT PLN.
If the plant reaches its full potential, it may only be behind Korea’s Saemangeum floating solar array – planned at up to 2.1GW – as the largest globally.
Masdar says the initial 145MW phase of the floating solar project, located in the Cirata reservoir in West Java, Indonesia, is expected to come online later this year.
It said that recent regulatory changes in Indonesia had allowed for the expansion of the project.
Suhail Al Mazrouei, UAE Minister of Energy and Infrastructure who attended a signing ceremony for the deal, said partnerships like this “feed into our priorities for COP28,” which the UAE is hosting and where the energy transition will be "front and centre with a concerted push to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.”
Masdar claims a current green energy capacity of more than 20GW, with plans to reach 100GW and 1 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030. It has recently been pushing into the Asian market, signing a deal in July to develop 2GW of renewable energy projects in Malaysia.
The UAE and its state-owned energy companies including Masdar have been under increased scrutiny in the run-up to COP28. Masdar’s chair Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who holds the presidency for the climate summit, has also been in the firing line from some quarters as he is also CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
