Saudi Arabia’s Principal Buyer of electricity has awarded four service contracts for large-scale battery storage projects to consortia featuring ACWA Power and Engie.
The signing of contracts was announced 20 August by the Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC), a central government entity tasked with negotiating power purchase agreements (PPAs) and energy storage service agreements.
Each agreement is for a 500MW, 4-hour duration (2,000MWh) battery energy storage system (BESS) project, which will be overseen by the Saudi Ministry of Energy.
They represent the first-ever award of build-own-operate contracts for battery storage through a Saudi government tender. The selected bidders entered 15-year service contracts and will retain 100% equity in their special purpose vehicle (SPV) companies.
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Qualified bidders were announced in January 2025, revealing that 33 bidders had applied, including big names such as Masdar, ACWA Power, EDF, and TotalEnergies. The qualification process, open to bidders with experience in renewable energy and/or battery storage, and with a tangible net worth of US$100 million or more for managing entities and US$50 million or more for technical partners, launched in November 2024.
At that time, SPPC said the BESS procurement programme was aligned with the Saudi Vision 2030 national policy to source 50% of the country’s electricity from renewable energy by the end of this decade.
Energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, who is also SPPC’s board chairman and additionally the Minister of Industrial and Mineral Resources, was in attendance as the contracts, worth more than SAR4.35 billion (~US$1.16 billion), were signed at a ceremony in Riyadh.
Three of the agreements were signed with a consortium comprising generation, transmission and distribution entity Saudi Energy, with Saudi-headquartered independent power producer (IPP) ACWA Power and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) provider Al Sharif Contracting and Commercial Development Company.
Of those projects, two, Haden and Al-Muwayh, are in the Makkah province, in the western region of Saudi Arabia. The remaining project awarded to the consortium, Al-Khahfah, is in Hail province, in the north.
India-headquartered EPC firm Larsen & Toubro issued a release a few days ago saying it was awarded contracts by an undisclosed client in the Middle East for 6GWh of BESS projects, which is thought to refer to the ACWA Power consortium’s trio of Saudi projects.
The fourth project was awarded to a consortium comprising French multinational energy major Engie and the Saudi integrated services company Haji Abdullah Alireza & Co. Ltd. That project, Al-Khushaybi, is in Qassim province, in central Saudi Arabia.
Engie said in a company LinkedIn post that the Al-Khushaybi project itself represents an investment of around US$220 million. The French utility noted that it has been present in Saudi Arabia for more than 20 years through its regional HQ in Riyadh, while globally it has brought 4.7GW of BESS into operation to date.
In April, the Principal Buyer started the qualification process for a second build-own-operate battery storage tender, this time for 3GW/12GWh of projects, again in the 500MW/2,000MWh per site configuration.
Saudi Arabia led global grid-scale BESS installations in July
As noted in a February article for ESN Premium subscribers (later republished as a free download in the Energy Storage Report 2026), Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have emerged as two of the world’s most prominent energy storage markets in a very short space of time.
With the procurement and buildout policy-driven and backed by oil export money, as of the beginning of this year, Saudi Arabia had seen 37GWh of BESS projects announced in operation, construction or procurement and the UAE around 28GWh, pipelines that have continued to grow.
According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, Saudi Arabia led global utility-scale installations in July, ahead of China. Of a total 9.1GW/33.4GWh brought online last month worldwide, Saudi Arabia’s 2.5GW/12.5GWh accounted for 37.3%, while China, with 3.7GW/10GWh, represented 30.1% of total installs in gigawatt-hour capacity terms.
The first edition of Energy Storage Summit Middle East takes place next week, 1-3 September 2026 at Dubai World Trade Center. Co-located with the Middle East Energy Show, the inaugural Energy Storage Middle East Summit brings the world-leading energy storage conference series to one of the world’s fastest-growing BESS markets. This landmark event will explore the Middle East’s trajectory to become the third-largest storage market globally by 2026, with a special focus on the region’s ambitious renewable energy targets and BESS integration strategies. For more information, visit the website.
