Levelized cost analysis for desalination using renewable energy in GCC

Seawater desalination plants are considered the main source of fresh water in most of the GCC countries. Desalination is an energy-intensive process, where energy price represents more than 44% of the cost of desalinated water. Almost all commercial desalination plants rely on fossil fuel to secure the energy requirements either in thermal or electrical form. GCC countries are gifted with consistent and predictable solar energy that can be used to power the desalination processes and to improve their sustainability and to reduce their environmental impacts. Solar energy can be harvested using photovoltaics (PV) panels or different forms of concentrated solar power. In this paper, the energy cost in the form of levelized cost of energy (LCOE) was calcu-lated for a PV solar energy generation plant and hence, the levelized cost of water (LCOW) for a reverse osmosis reference desalination plant in the six GCC countries had been estimated and compared. System Advisor Model (SAM) is a comprehensive renewable energy analysis soft-ware developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and is used in this work. SAM relies on the metrological weather data for the evaluation of solar energy. The included financial model within SAM was used to estimate the LCOE and the Power Purchase Agreement price. A reference reverse osmosis desalination plant of a capacity of 400,000 m3/d (88 MIGD) has been used in this study. The power consumption of the plant is estimated as 76 MW at 4.56 kWh/m3. A photovoltaic power plant of capacity 76 MW was designed and the LCOE produced by this pant was estimated. The LCOE was different according to the PV plant location in GCC coun-tries. The obtained LCOE is used to estimate the LCOW produced by this plant using Desalination Economic Evaluation Program software. The LCOE for the studied locations ranged from 8.46 to 9.11 0/kWh (1.0 USD $ = 100 0), and the LCOW ranged from 103.0 to 105.0 0/m3, compared to 10.737 0/kWh and 110.1 0/m3 for the conventional combined cycle power plant.