News

Saudi Firm ACWA Power To Build 1.5 GW Wind Farm In Uzbekistan

The huge Kungrad Wind Farm will have an investment value of $2.4 billion, while offsetting 2.4 million tons of carbon annually.

Published

3 years ago

December 29, 2022

Nour Nasir

saudi firm acwa power to build 1.5 gw wind farm in uzbekistan

Like many countries worldwide, Uzbekistan is beginning to ramp up its clean energy efforts. As part of the nation’s plans to decarbonize, Saudi Arabian company ACWA Power has been tasked to build a 1.5-gigawatt power generation plant in Karakalpakstan, which will be named the Kungrad Wind Farm.

With purchase and investment agreements signed in August 2022, ACWA is now ready to start work on three separate 500-megawatt wind turbine projects on the Uzbek site, plus an additional 100-megawatt battery storage system. In total, the site is projected to have an investment value of $2.4 billion and will be the largest single-site wind farm in Central Asia.

The Kungrad Wind Farm will offset 2.4 million tons of carbon emissions annually and support a long-term Uzbek government strategy to diversify the country’s energy production, which also aims to add 8 gigawatts and 12 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity, respectively, by 2030.

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“The development of green energy and market reform go hand in hand in Uzbekistan, and the Kungrad project is a milestone both for our wind industry and the new public-private partnership model […] The wind farm in Karakalpakstan, built by our reliable partner ACWA Power, will be another pillar of a sustainable and reliable energy system in Uzbekistan,” says Jurabek Mirzamakhmudov, Minister of Energy of Uzbekistan.

The project will be fully operational by 2027 when it will begin supplying energy to 1.65 million homes.

“The signing of key agreements today for the landmark Kungrad wind farm project, which will set a new benchmark for sustainable energy development in the region, would not have been possible without the guidance of our visionary leadership and the trust and commitment of our partners from the Uzbek government,” says Mohammad Abunayyan, Chairman, ACWA Power.

The 1.5-gigawatt Kungrad Wind Farm is ACWA Power’s fifth project in Uzbekistan. As part of the recently signed collaboration, the Saudi Arabian company will also construct several green hydrogen production plants in the Central Asian country, as Uzbekistan aims to lessen its reliance on natural gas.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.