The Scene
On a stretch of desert within view of a camel racetrack and protected land for ancient dunes — where fighter jets from the Al Dhafra Air Base occasionally zip by overhead — Abu Dhabi renewable energy firm Masdar has begun construction on the world’s largest solar-and-battery power project.
The first solar panels were installed last week to supply, with help from battery storage, uninterrupted clean energy to the grid, as the UAE capital prepares for a surge in demand from AI data centers.
Chinese suppliers, offering cost competitiveness and cutting-edge hardware, will deliver the majority of the project: State-owned PowerChina will provide engineering and construction expertise; Jinko Solar and JA Solar will supply the solar panels; and BYD is supplying the batteries, Masdar’s COO Abdulaziz Alobaidli told Semafor in an interview.
Masdar plans to send at least 10 Emirati employees to China to work with BYD to train to maintain the systems being installed, according to Alobaidli, who is keen that the workers become fluent in the engineering skills needed. “I’m even pushing them to learn Mandarin... I want them in the factories, not offices.”
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The $6 billion project is slated for completion in 2027 and is designed to deliver 1 GW of continuous power 24/7 — the equivalent of electrifying half a million homes — at a competitive price to the utility provider, Emirates Water & Electricity Co.
Solving for renewable energy intermittency “has been the moonshot challenge of our time,” Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and chairman of Masdar, said when the project was first announced in January. “This will, for the first time ever, transform renewable energy into baseload energy.”
Still, this is not the first investment in battery storage from Masdar, which has other investments in the US and the UK, where it’s part of the world’s first storage system connected to a floating offshore wind farm. The firm is looking at additional battery storage projects — potentially leveraging solar and wind energy — in Africa and Central Asia, Alobaidli said, declining to name specific partners.
Once the project is done, he said, Masdar will assess whether the batteries in this project could one day be used to kickstart power grids during blackouts, which have increasingly plagued cities around the world as heatwaves strain grids in places like California, India, and Kuwait.
Step Back
Masdar is more than halfway to a target of 100 GW of capacity in its clean energy project portfolio by 2030, with 51 GW operational, under construction, or at an advanced stage of planning as of August. Meanwhile, the UAE is aiming to triple its renewables capacity to 14 GW by 2030 and raise the share of alternative energy to 30% of its overall energy mix by 2031. Around 15% of the energy consumed in the UAE is from renewable sources, Alobaidli said.
Energy demand is slated to surge in the coming decade as the UAE continues to deliver on an ambitious AI agenda that includes a 5 GW UAE-US AI Campus.
Notable
- A Chinese firm outlined plans to build the world’s largest floating wind turbine, cementing the country’s status as the dominant force in a sector that has otherwise grappled with high interest rates and supply chain challenges, Semafor reported.