Tesla battery switched on at world’s biggest solar farm in Middle East

The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has successfully switched on a pilot Tesla battery system at the mammoth 1GW Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, as part of the company’s efforts to diversity its energy mix.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park is one of the world’s largest renewable energy projects, and while its current generating capacity sits at around 1,013MW, DEWA plans to expand the project to 5GW by the end of this decade.

The new battery system is comparatively tiny. The pilot project includes a Tesla lithium-ion battery system with capacity of 1.21MW and 8.61MWh and was inaugurated last week.

“The energy storage project using Tesla’s lithium-ion battery solution at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the largest single-site solar park in the world, aims to diversify the energy mix and enhance energy storage technologies,” said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA.

“The pilot project will evaluate the technical and economic capabilities of this technology within the operational framework of electricity systems in solar photovoltaic power plants.

“It also tests the role of this technology in the integration between clean energy and energy storage to achieve maximum efficiency and reliability,” Al Tayer said.

DEWA also has another storage pilot project at the same solar park, testing a sodium sulphur (NaS) energy solution with a capacity of 1.2 MW and 7.5 MWh.

The project’s fourth phase will combine concentrated solar power (CSP) and solar PV for a production capacity of 950MW and will provide the world’s largest global thermal storage capacity of 15 hours.

DEWA is also developing a 250MW pumped-storage hydroelectric power station in Hatta, the first of its kind in the Arabian Gulf region which will generate electricity using water stored at the Hatta Dam with a storage capacity of 1,500MWh.