A project combining solar generation and battery storage to provide 1GW of ‘round-the-clock’ dispatchable power was unveiled at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW).
Dr Sultan Al Jaber, minister of industry and advanced technology for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and chairman of state-owned renewables company Masdar announced plans for the renewable energy power plant at the opening ceremony of ADSW on Monday (12 January).
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Pairing 5.2GWdc of solar PV generation with 19GWh of battery storage capacity will enable the plant to deliver up to a gigawatt of ‘baseload’ power 24/7, every day, Al Jaber claimed.
“For decades, the biggest barrier facing renewable energy has been intermittency. It has been the moonshot challenge of our time,” the minister said in a speech attended by dignitaries including UAE president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
“How can we power a world that never sleeps with energy sources that do? How can we transform renewable resources into reliable power? Today, we have an answer. Excellencies, colleagues and friends, I am pleased to announce the launch of the world’s first renewable energy facility capable of providing renewable energy, at scale, around the clock.”
Masdar-EWEC partnership
The project will be based in Abu Dhabi at an undisclosed location. Technology providers or the selected battery technology type are also yet to be revealed publicly, along with project timelines.
It will be delivered by Masdar and the state electricity and water procurement and supply entity Emirates Water & Electricity Co. (EWEC) with partners.
“The accelerated integration of solar power and advanced battery energy storage sets a new benchmark in clean energy, driving sustainability and reducing carbon emissions,” said Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi UAE minister of investment and CEO and managing director of Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company PJSC (ADQ) sovereign wealth fund, taking part in the announcement alongside Masdar’s Sultan Al Jaber.
“This will, for the first time ever, transform renewable energy into baseload energy,” Al Jaber said in his speech.
Other efforts to deliver ‘baseload’ renewable energy
While it is undoubtedly the largest such project announced to date, other efforts are being made worldwide to deliver 24/7 renewable energy from solar at scale.
In 2022, India got its first 24/7 solar-powered town when a project at Modhera in Gujarat was equipped with a 6MW solar PV plant, 271x 1kW rooftop solar arrays and a 6MW/15MWh BESS through a government tender.
There have been numerous power purchase agreements (PPAs) also signed in India for round-the-clock renewable power supply, although these are more typically backed by pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) rather than batteries, have corporate customers as offtakers and are still in the planning stages.
Staying within the corporate sector, in Chile developer Atlas Renewable Energy signed a 24/7 renewables PPA with mining company Codelco earlier this year for the supply of 275GWh of energy annually over a 15-year period.
Chile is also home to the biggest BESS and solar PV project currently in construction, the Oasis de Atacama project which will pair 2GW of solar with up to 11GWh of BESS when completed. It is currently being built in phases, with developer Grenergy recently raising US$324 million for its 296MW PV, 1.1GWh fourth phase.
The Middle East region, meanwhile, has been relatively slow in its adoption of battery storage versus more mature markets like China and the US but is predicted to rapidly catch up based on policy announcements such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 strategy.
Saudi Arabia is running its first 8GWh public procurement for BESS resources, while Chinese BESS-specialised battery maker Hithium recently announced plans to build a 5GWh production plant in Saudi Arabia in partnership with Saudi engineering solutions company MANAT as the pair also launched a BESS solution designed for use in desert conditions.
The region does boast some of the world’s most ambitious solar PV projects, such as the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai, which has a planned 5GW generation capacity by 2030 from both solar PV and concentrated solar power (CSP). As of February last year, capacity had exceeded 2.6GW, making it the world’s largest single-site solar generation project, with Masdar among the developers to work on it.
Masdar has experience working on or investing in solar-plus-storage and standalone battery storage projects in global markets, including the UK and California in the US, has signed agreements to deploy BESS with the government of Uzbekistan in Central Asia and is participating in the Saudi Arabia tender.
