SAUDI Electricity Company (SEC) has signed a SR10.7-billion ($2.85 billion) power deal with a consortium that includes South Korea’s Samsung for the construction of the Qurayyah plant.

Al Qurayyah, south of Al Khobar, would have a power generation capacity of around 3,900 MW, SEC said.

The plant is the third of the six planned independent power projects (IPPs) that involves the private sector and that would add around 11,000 MW of capacity in the kingdom. It will be one of the biggest IPP combined cycle gas-fired power plants in the world.

SEC will buy all the power produced by the plant from the consortium, which will run it on a build-own-operate basis for 20 years.

The consortium also includes ACWA Power Projects and Mena Fund. The combined cycle gas-fired plant is expected to start production before the summer of 2014, SEC said.