By John — Desalination News
The Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority (SEWA) has announced more than AED 5.2 billion (roughly $1.4 billion) in strategic water and energy projects, an infrastructure package that also carried an updated, later timeline for the emirate’s flagship desalination project. SEWA now expects the Al Hamriyah Independent Water Project (IWP) to reach full output in the fourth quarter of 2028, pushing back previous guidance from both SEWA and its development partner, Saudi-based ACWA Power.
Al Hamriyah is Sharjah’s first independent water project and its first privately developed reverse osmosis (RO) plant — a model in which a private developer designs, finances, builds, owns and operates the facility, selling the water to a public offtaker under a long-term agreement. ACWA Power signed the development agreement with SEWA in September 2024, and the Ruler of Sharjah, Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, laid the plant’s foundation stone the same month.
At full build-out, the plant is designed to produce 410,000 cubic meters a day — about 150 million cubic meters a year — enough, by SEWA’s own October 2026 estimate, to serve roughly 1.4 million people. The project was originally structured in stages, with an initial 272,000 cubic meters a day meant to come online by the second quarter of 2027. SEWA’s updated timetable now puts full capacity in the fourth quarter of 2028, later than the Q3 2028 date SEWA itself had previously given and the Q2 2028 date cited by ACWA Power. The plant will share existing seawater intake and outfall infrastructure already in place at the Al Hamriyah site, which should limit some of the marine-works risk that often delays large coastal plants.
The desalination timeline update came bundled with a broader slate of SEWA investments rather than as a standalone announcement. The package includes new water transmission networks, pumping stations and storage facilities; upgrades that add 270 million gallons of reservoir storage capacity; a strategic underground water storage project; and an artificial-intelligence- and GIS-based network control room intended to cut water losses. On the electricity side, SEWA pointed to high-voltage grid work, including smart substations and reactive power management that it says have already cut grid losses by 25% and faults by 40%, plus an ongoing conversion of the high-voltage network from a ring to a meshed configuration to speed fault recovery.
Al Hamriyah is one of several large independent water projects that Gulf utilities and developers have signed in the past two years as the region leans further into privately financed desalination to meet growing demand. A slip of several quarters on a flagship scheme is a reminder that even well-financed IWPs, backed by an experienced developer and a government offtaker, are not immune to the engineering, procurement and construction delays that have hit comparable plants elsewhere in the region. SEWA framed the broader investment package, and the desalination project within it, as part of the UAE’s Water Security Strategy 2036, which aims to secure water supply against interruption and reduce the country’s reliance on groundwater and conventional thermal desalination.
Construction on Al Hamriyah continues toward the revised milestones, and SEWA officials, including Faisal Al Sarkal, director of the Water Department, and Hamad Al Tunaiji, director of the Power Transmission Department, are expected to provide further updates as the project moves through its construction phases. No financial penalty or compensation mechanism tied to the delay has been disclosed.
(Source: Smart Water Magazine)