Saudi Arabia have agreed a deal on a 50MW solar electricity system

It’s slowly dawned on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that their huge country might be a good fit for solar electricity; loads of sunshine and vast tracts of empty land. It might also mean that they use less of their increasingly less valuable oil resource to produce heavily subsidised domestic electricity. This means more oil for export, even if at $48 a barrel, it isn’t the cash cow it used to be.

Solar is cheap too. Cleantechnica reports today that the Saudis have agreed a deal on a 50MW system which will supply electricity at less than 5 cents (US) per kWh. That’s just over 3 pence a unit. For the next twenty five years at least. This the cheapest installed price for solar electricity we have seen.

Whilst this is undoubtedly good news for a country which is quickly eating into its massive cash reserves to keep its people happy, they must be wondering what impact solar electricity at this price will do to their hydrocarbons business.

Read more at CleanTechnica.