Acwa Power wants a bigger piece of Saudi’s first independent water and power project (IWPP). The utility giant signed a SAR 843.3 mn share purchase agreement to buy PIF-backed Badeel’s full 32% stake in Shuaibah Water and Electricity Company, according to a disclosure. The deal will lift Acwa’s ownership to 62%, from 30% currently.

What’s the asset? Shuaibah Water and Electricity Company was set up for the Kingdom’s veryfirst IWPP. The Shuaibah 1 IWPP, commissioned back in 2010, bundled 900 MW of power capacity with 880k cubic meters per day of desalination in its first phase, while planned expansion was set to see its capacity grow to some 1 mn cubic meters a day.

Other Shuaibah projects are their own thing: Subsequent capacity expansions were folded into the same lineage, but newer Shuaibah-branded assets, including large-scale solar PV projects and RO-only desal plants, sit under separate special purpose vehicles with separate contracts.

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