Middle East New Energy Storage

The potential for energy storage in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is significant, given the country's abundant resources and growing demand for energy. With a rapidly expanding population and economy, KSA is facing increasing energy demand.

The UAE has installed most of the energy storage systems in the GCC region. In 2016, Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Authority announced the deployment of around 108 MW of sodium-sulfur-based BESS with an individual capacity of around 4 MW and 8 MW at diferent locations to support their distribution network.

Storage as a solution: Energy storage has emerged as one of the potential solutions to address the challenge of balancing supply and demand that arises from the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources. Increases the reliability and stability of the power grid by smoothing out fluctuations in supply and demand.

The battery energy storage market has not experienced any significant growth in this region hence it is still seen as a new technology and the costs are relatively high compared to the parts of the world.

The addition of the energy storage systems would help: Energy Time Shifting: As batteries help to shift the energy for use at a later time and hence Australia is installing it as a solution to store the overproduction of renewable energy during the day and use it at a later time when the demand is high.

The governments in the GCC region could collaborate with energy storage developers to introduce favorable regulations and provide capital investments to support the development of a utility-scale energy storage market and eliminate the financing risk and uncertainty factor for the projects by providing long-term contracts through auctions.