Saudi Arabia signs world’s biggest battery storage deal with China’s BYD

Saudi Arabia likes big, splashy deals and its latest has set the battery industry aflutter, signing with BYD Energy Storage for what will be the world’s biggest ever grid storage contract.

The deal is for five lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, each sized at 500 megawatt (MW)/2,500MWh, across the country, for a total of 2.5 gigawatts (GW)/12.5GWh.

The five-site deal for the five-hour batteries was foreshadowed in January when Chinese media broke the news that BYD had won a tender that had only been announced just months earlier, in August.

BYD will handle all aspects of delivery and installation at sites reported to be in demand centres of Riyadh, Qaisumah, Dawadmi, Al Jouf, and Rabigh, where the batteries will operate as grid stabilisers. 

It is also using its new MC Cube-T technology, launched in April last year. This uses what’s known as a CTS (Cell-to-System) technology which, similar to cell-to-body technology increasingly used in electric vehicles, integrates the storage cells into the structure of the whole battery pack.

It means fewer materials are needed to make the unit and there is a higher proportion of storage cells to the overall unit than in usual grid battery packs. 

The contract comes on top of an initial 500MW/2000MWh BYD battery switched on at Bisha, southwest Saudi Arabia, in January.

BYD says its total projects delivered or signed for in Saudi Arabia amount to 15.1GWh of storage.

The Middle Eastern country is buying in batteries now to support its big renewable energy ambitions for 2030, but time is running out to meet them.

In 2012 Saudi Arabia announced plans to reach 41GW of solar capacity by 2032, at a cost of $110 billion.

It has gradually updated this goal over time and now plans to get at least 50 per cent of its power from renewable energy by 2030, or some 130GW in total split into 58.7GW from solar and 40GW from wind.

Currently, according to regional energy publication MEES, Saudi Arabia has connected 6.5GW of renewable energy capacity to grid with 3.7GW of that coming from four new solar plants last year. 

Government website Saudi and Middle East Green Initiatives shows 44.2GW of projects under development, and another 100-130GW expected to be tendered before 2030.