Witnessed by Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Acwa and Saudi Electricity Procurement Company officially signed three 15 year energy storage service agreements, and the development process of the world's top tier large-scale battery energy storage cluster has officially begun.

4-hour long-term energy storage as the core configuration

This contract covers three battery energy storage projects in Harden, Muwai, and Alkafa, with a total scale of 1500MW/6000MWh, making it one of the largest publicly announced battery energy storage procurement projects in the world by 2026.

All three projects adopt a 4-hour full load energy storage design, which can complete power storage during the peak period of photovoltaic output during the day and smoothly release electricity during the peak period of electricity consumption at night, directly filling the significant gap between day and night electricity supply and demand in the Saudi Arabian power grid.

Based on the global energy storage industry data in 2026, the total planned long-term energy storage capacity of over 4 hours in the Middle East has increased by 127% year-on-year, with Saudi Arabia leading the entire Gulf region in terms of the speed of energy storage project implementation.

Supporting flexible scheduling of the power grid

The 15 year long-term energy storage service agreement model breaks the pricing logic of traditional energy procurement and reduces the operational uncertainty of energy storage projects with long-term stable service revenue.

After the completion of the project, it will directly strengthen the peak shaving capability of Saudi Arabia's power grid, reduce the power loss caused by the integration of wind and solar power bases, and support Saudi Arabia's transformation goal of "50% renewable energy by 2030".

As a leading energy development company in the Middle East, Acwa currently holds over 9GW of energy storage projects worldwide. After the implementation of this cluster project, its proportion of long-term energy storage installed capacity in operation and under construction will increase to 62%. Keywords: energy storage news, Middle East news

This project also provides a reference energy storage development sample for economies with a high proportion of new energy access worldwide. Through large-scale long-term energy storage deployment, the stability upgrade of the power system can be achieved at low cost.Editor/Cheng Liting