Rising power consumption poses real challenges

Saleh Al-Awaji, deputy minister of water and electricity and chairman of the board of directors at the Saudi Electricity Company, said on Sunday that the Kingdom came top in electricity consumption among countries of the region.The increasing use of electricity posed real challenges, Al-Awaji told a conference on the sidelines of the Saudi Water and Energy Forum.“There are pressing needs to increase the number of future projects in the electricity sector,” explained Al-Awaji, adding that there should be developments in the supply and demand of electricity in the Kingdom. ‘The use of electricity tends to increase in the summer due to excessive use of air-conditioning.”This, he said, demanded reviewing air-conditioning products available in the market and imported from abroad. According to Al-Awaji, the Ministry of Water and Electricity is now working on developing electricity networks linking countries of the region. The ministry also looks at exporting electricity at international rates to European countries in winter, when less electricity is being used in the Kingdom. Import of electricity, on the other hand, could be made in summer.“We have discussed the potential opportunities in linking electricity among countries and developing projects related to electricity,” said Al-Awaji, who urged the public “to moderate the unjustified use of electricity that is financially exhausting for Arab governments, who seek to provide electricity at reasonable prices.”Minister of Water and Electricity Abdullah Al-Hussayen told Arab News after opening the conference  that Saudi Arabia will have its first solar-powered water desalination plant within two years in  Al-Khafji region near the Kuwaiti border.He said the plant will have a capacity of 30,000 cubic meters and will constitute a turning point in the production of desalinated water in the Kingdom.“We are currently producing 60 percent of the desalinated water for municipal use,” he said, adding that this ration would increase in the near future.The minister said the ministry was making use of surface water through the construction of giant dams in Tihama Sahel, which is rich in water resources.-Hussayen told the forum that the volume of water and sewage projects in addition to the expansion of basic infrastructure was worth around SR100 billion. “There are 1.7 million water connections and 880,000 sewage connections. The total length of the sewage networks is about 19,000 km,” he said. According to the minister, there were 430 dams currently under construction in various parts of the country.