Saudi Aramco, GE launch kingdom’s first wind turbine

Saudi Aramco has launched the commissioning of the kingdom’s first wind turbine, supplied by US-based General Electric (GE), the oil giant said in a statement on Wednesday.

The turbine will provide power to the company’s bulk plant facility in Turaif, in the northwestern region.

It will also feed surplus electricity back into the national grid, said Abdulkarim Ghamdi, Saudi Aramco’s executive director for power systems.

The project will generate 3.45 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy by 2020 and 9.5GW by 2023, as part of wider efforts to increase the contribution of renewables to the kingdom’s energy mix under the National Transformation Plan 2020 and Vision 2030 initiatives.

Earlier this week, Saudi energy minister Khalid Al-Falih said the country will soon launch a renewable energy program that will see it invest between $30 billion and $50 billion by 2023.

The kingdom plans to invest mainly in solar and wind projects, as well as some geothermal and waste ones, the minister said at a conference in Abu Dhabi.