A battery storage facility built at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai marks the first storage system to be twinned with a PV plant at a grid-scale level in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
NGK Insulators supplied the batteries and electrical engineering company Ingeteam was responsible for the supply of a 1.2MW power conversion system with its medium voltage components, plus the power plant controller.
UAE utility Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA) want to evaluate the effectiveness of the storage system in stabilising grid fluctuations caused by the intermittency of renewables.
The storage system will also be used for energy time shifting, frequency control, and voltage control by using the large capacity of the batteries. Read more: The road ahead for lithium-ion batteries
The solar park, which is being built in phases, has a planned capacity of 1,000MW by 2020 and 5,000MW by 2030 and will use both photovoltaic and concentrated solar technologies.
The 13MW first phase became operational in 2013 using PV panels, with a 200MW second phase launched in March 2017. A further 800MW of PV will be online by 2020.
The fourth phase of the solar park will be a concentrated solar park and will feature the tallest solar tower in the world at 260 metres.
