Water and Electricity Minister Abdullah Al-Hussayyin delivered on his promise Saturday when the Shu'aibah 3 Plant was powered up on schedule for full commercial production. The minister said water scarcity in the Makkah and Al-Baha regions will be eliminated with the plant now operating at full capacity. Located about 90 km south of Jeddah, the Shu'aibah 3 Plant is Saudi Arabia's first dual production plant for water and electricity. Its net production has reached 900 megawatts of electricity and 880,000 cubic meters of desalinated water daily. The plant supplies the electricity grid in the western region, feeding the cities of Makkah, Jeddah and Taif. Water from Shu'aibah 3 will be pumped to the reservoirs of the Saline Water Conversion Commission (SWCC) from where a network of pipes will make the supply to Makkah, Jeddah, Taif and Al-Baha according to their allocated quotas. The pipe network solves the distribution problem as well, the minister said. Additional water supply from the plant is expected to lead to a fall in demand for the water tanker business. The SR9.3 billion Shu'aibah 3 plant is Saudi Arabia's first privatized independent water and power project (IWPP). “The continued increase in population density in the Kingdom leads to the increasing need for the consumption of electricity and desalinated water,” Yahya Al-Yahya, head of Shu'aibah Water and Electricity Company (SWEC) board of directors, has said.
