ACWA Power signs $478m Hassyan desalination deal with DEWA

Dubai, UAE - ACWA Power has signed a 30-year, $478 million (SAR 1.794 billion) water purchase agreement under which the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) will buy the output of a seawater reverse osmosis plant at Hassyan in Dubai.

The Saudi-listed utility developer disclosed the contract to the Saudi Exchange on 28 October 2026. According to the filing, the plant at the Hassyan complex, developed as an independent water project, is designed to produce about 272,000 cubic metres of desalinated water a day.

ACWA Power will own 40% of the project. Its scope under the deal runs from development and financing through to building and then operating the plant.

ACWA Power told the exchange it will not see a financial impact from the agreement until the project has been successfully completed, a milestone it puts at 2030. Its filing gives the same date for the award and for the signing.

The Dubai deal is the second major disclosure ACWA Power has made in under a month. Earlier in October it reported financial close on the Rabigh 2 independent power producer (IPP) expansion in Saudi Arabia. Late in September, the company said initial commercial operation had started at its Qassim 1 combined cycle plant.

Unlike those two projects, the new contract sits outside the kingdom, in the UAE, where DEWA is the offtaker that buys the plant's output.

The two companies already work together at Hassyan. On 3 October 2023, DEWA and ACWA Power signed a 30-year water purchase agreement covering the first phase of desalination at Hassyan. That solar-powered plant, a $914 million (AED 3.357 billion) investment, was planned to produce 180 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD).

DEWA had named ACWA Power preferred bidder for phase 1 in August 2023, after receiving what the authority called a world-record low bid of $0.36536 per cubic metre of desalinated water. The phase sits on 252,300 square metres of land and is DEWA's first project under the Independent Water Producer (IWP) model.

At the phase 1 signing in October 2023, HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, said: “We are pleased to sign the agreement with ACWA Power. This project supports the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to enhance water supplies in Dubai from sustainable sources and achieve the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 and the Dubai Net Zero Carbon Emissions Strategy 2050 to provide 100% of Dubai’s total power capacity from clean energy sources by 2050. We are building water production plants based on Sea Water Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) technology which require less energy than Multi-Stage Flash distillation (MSF) plants, making it a more sustainable choice for water desalination. By 2030, DEWA aims to produce 100% of desalinated water by a mix of clean energy and waste heat.”

On its Hassyan project page, DEWA links the programme to two strategies: the Integrated Water Resource Management Strategy 2030 for Dubai, and the UAE's Water Security Strategy 2036.

When the phase 1 agreement was signed, DEWA said it planned to lift Dubai's desalination capacity from 490 MIGD to 730 MIGD by 2030.