Saudi Principal Buyer signs $1.16bn agreements for BESS projects

Principal Buyer, the Saudi’s Power Procurement Company, has signed four storage service agreements for battery energy storage system (BESS) projects, representing a combined investment of over $1.16bn (SR4.35bn).

The four projects total 2GW of installed capacity, each rated at 500MW with a four-hour storage duration. All are being delivered under a build-own-operate (BOO) model, and the designated sites are:

Al Muwyah and Haden (Makkah region)
Al Kahafa (Hail region)
Al Khushaybi (Qassim region)

The first three have been awarded to a consortium of Saudi Energy, ACWA and Al Sharif Contracting and Commercial Development Company; Al Khushaybi has been awarded to a consortium of ENGIE and Haji Abdullah Alireza.

The Principal Buyer is responsible for pre-development studies, tendering of generation and storage capacity, and the signing of power purchase and storage service agreements with the developer groups. This program, supervised by the Ministry of Energy, supports grid reliability and the integration of renewables, in line with the national target of roughly 50% renewable energy in the generation mix by 2030.