The Saudi Power Procurement Company, also known as the Principal Buyer, has signed four storage service agreements for battery energy storage system (BESS) projects.
The projects will provide a total capacity of 2GW with four-hour storage with a planned investment of more than $1.16bn (SR4.35bn).
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The agreements were signed in the presence of Abdulaziz bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Minister of Energy, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources, and chairman of the Saudi Power Procurement Company’s Board of Managers.
The Ministry of Energy is supervising the initiative.
This first group of projects form part of Saudi Arabia’s strategy to enhance the reliability and efficiency of its electricity generation infrastructure.
They are being developed as part of the build-own-operate model and are aligned with ongoing efforts to integrate more renewable energy and storage into the national grid, targeting an electricity generation mix with around 50% renewable energy by 2030.
The initial BESS projects comprise the Al Muwyah BESS Independent Storage Provider (ISP) and Haden BESS ISP in the Makkah region, and the Al Kahafa BESS ISP in the Hail region.
Each site will deliver 500MW of storage for four hours. These three projects have been assigned to a consortium of Saudi Energy, ACWA and the Al Sharif Contracting and Commercial Development Company.
Meanwhile, the Al Khushaybi BESS ISP in the Qassim region, with the same capacity of 500MW and four hours of storage duration, has been awarded to a consortium consisting of ENGIE and Haji Abdullah Alireza.
The Principal Buyer will oversee pre-development studies and the tendering of power generation and storage projects, and is responsible for signing power purchase and storage service agreements with developer groups.
