DEWA launches pilot project utilising Tesla’s lithium-ion energy storage technology

DEWA has launched pilot project utilising Tesla’s lithium-ion energy storage technology. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has launched a pilot project for energy storage at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, utilising Tesla’s lithium-ion battery technology, as part of its attempts to diversify the energy mix and improve energy storage technologies. The project has a power capacity of 1.21 MW and an energy capacity of 8.61 MWh, with a life duration of up to ten years.

“Our strategy and work plans are guided by the vision and directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to ensure energy security and sustainability. We have an integrated vision to achieve these directives with three main pillars: The first is to produce more clean energy, especially solar energy, under the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050. The second is to decouple the desalination process from the production of electricity and desalinate water using a combination of clean energy sources and waste heat. The third is disrupting the role of utilities using Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, such as AI, UAVs, energy storage, blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT) and many more,” said HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA.

“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. This supports our efforts to achieve the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, which aims to provide 75% of Dubai’s total power capacity from clean energy sources by 2050 and make Dubai a global hub for clean energy and a green economy.  The pilot project will evaluate this technology’s technical and economic capabilities 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,” added Al Tayer.

DEWA is working on other energy storage projects, according to Al Tayer. These include the use of concentrated solar power (CSP) in the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park’s fourth phase, which mixes CSP and photovoltaic solar panels to produce 950MW. The project will have the world’s greatest global thermal storage capacity of 15 hours, allowing for round-the-clock energy availability. DEWA is also building a 250MW pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant at Hatta, which will be the first of its kind in the Arabian Gulf. It will generate power utilising water stored at Hatta Dam, which has a 1,500 MWh storage capacity. DEWA has launched the Green Hydrogen initiative, which is the first of its type in the Middle East and North Africa to manufacture green hydrogen using solar energy, in conjunction with Expo 2020 Dubai and Siemens Energy. The project took place at DEWA’s R&D Centre’s solar park’s outside testing facilities.

DEWA’s lithium-ion energy storage pilot project is the company’s second battery energy storage pilot project at the solar park, according to Waleed Bin Salman, Executive Vice President of Business Development and Excellence. The initial project was to build and evaluate a sodium sulphur (NaS) energy solution with a power capacity of 1.2 MW and an energy capacity of 7.5 MWh in conjunction with AMPLEX–NGK. This was the region’s first utility-scale energy storage pilot project.

Both pilot systems, according to Bin Salman, allow bi-directional charging (charged from the grid and/or a solar plant and discharged to the grid).