State utility Emirates Water & Electricity Company (Ewec) plans to go to the market to procure 400MW of short-duration batteries in 2024, according to its executive director for strategy and planning, Bruce Smith.

“By the late 2020s, Ewec expects to be operating with well above 90 per cent clean energy during winter daytime hours when both solar and nuclear capacity are available,” Smith said in a recent social media post.

“This will require batteries to provide grid stability services that have until now been supplied by gas-powered assets.

“Ewec plans to go to the market to procure 400MW of short-duration batteries early in 2024 as the first step in this process.”

Ewec issued an expression of interest (EoI) request for the contract to develop the project over the summer.

Firms, which include the leading utility developers and investors, are understood to have submitted their EOIs on 18 September, as MEED reported.

Related read: Region turns into battery storage hotspot

The greenfield project has a power capacity of 400MW and includes one hour of storage depth and associated infrastructure. 

Industry sources estimate the projects to be worth between $650m and $800m.

Ewec said the project is designed to furnish both primary and secondary operating reserves, including crucial functions such as frequency response and voltage regulation.

US-headquartered Sargent & Lundy is the client’s technical adviser for the project.

MEED understands the project will comprise two 200MW facilities. The first will be located near the existing solar photovoltaic (PV) plant in Sweihan, and the second will be in Madinat Zayed.

Battery hotspot

The Middle East and North Africa region is becoming a global battery energy storage hotspot.

Oman, which does not plan to procure any additional gas-fired capacity, intends to develop battery energy storage facilities to address the intermittency of its renewable energy resources.

In September, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Global awarded the multi-utilities contract for Amaala, one of Saudi Arabia’s new tourism destinations.

In addition to a 250MW solar PV power plant, the contract includes a 700 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery energy storage facility, as well as renewable energy-powered water desalination and wastewater treatment plants.

It is only the second project of its kind in the region, following the Red Sea Project, which in 2020-21 included a 1,300MWh battery energy storage system in its multi-utilities infrastructure, the world’s largest at the time of construction.

Other recent developments also show the region’s potential role in developing lithium and battery storage solutions.