ACWA Power International told lenders attending a status meeting in Dubai in late October that the Shuaibah independent water and power project in Saudi Arabia was on schedule with initial commercial operations date set for 5 February 2009.
Output at that time is expected to be 293 MW of generated electricity and 293,000 m³/d of desalinated water. The second unit will be operational by April 2009 with output then increasing to 486 MW and 587,000 m³/day towards the eventual capacity of 900 MW and 880,000 m³/d which will be reached upon commissioning in July 2009
Site construction is on target with 70% of work completed to date. The total project cost to owner SWEC is US $2.5 billion.