While there’s no shortage of hot sunny days in the MENA region and the United Arab Emirates in particular, it’s not enough to harness the sun’s energy using solar panels. The generated energy has to be stored somewhere so that it can be utilized when needed, instead of only when the sun is shining. That’s why the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) and Tesla have joined forces to install a Tesla battery energy storage system (BESS) at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, one of the world’s largest renewable projects in the world.

“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 DEWA managing director and CEO Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer.

Another goal of the pilot project is to evaluate the technical and economic capabilities of the technology and to test its role in the integration between clean energy and energy storage to achieve maximum efficiency and reliability.

Currently, the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park can generate around 1 MW of electricity, but DEWA aims to expand it to 5 GW by the end of this decade. To put the number into perspective, a typical nuclear reactor produces approximately 1 GW of electricity.

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DEWA is also working on other renewable projects, testing a sodium sulphur (NaS) energy solution and developing a 250 MW pumped-storage hydroelectric power station.

Together, these renewable projects aim to realize the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, whose goal is to produce more than 75 percent of Dubai’s energy requirements from clean, renewable sources to significantly reduce the city’s carbon footprint in the world.