The western Red Sea microgrid is expected to provide clean energy to a city covering an area of about 28,000 square kilometers.
Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea City project is making headlines for building the world’s largest solar energy storage microgrid, Interesting Engineering With a 400 MW solar power system and a 1.3 GWh energy storage system, the project aims to revolutionize sustainable energy solutions in the hospitality and customer care industry.
The ambitious project, led by tech giant Huawei, aims to power a major tourist destination that Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Global company is developing.
Located on the southwestern coast of Tabuk province in the western Red Sea, the Red Sea City project covers an area of approximately 28,000 square kilometers. When completed in 2030, it will feature 50 hotels with 8,000 rooms and more than 1,000 residences on 22 islands and six mainland locations. The city is expected to accommodate up to one million tourists a year, all of whom will benefit from clean energy, without needing to be connected to the external grid.
“This is expected to become the world’s first destination to be completely powered by clean energy,” said Alex Xing, president of Huawei Digital Power for the Middle East and Central Asia region.
The project will utilize Huawei’s FusionSolar Smart String Energy Storage Solution (ESS), a microgrid solution that will enable Red Sea City to meet its own energy needs. The intermittent and fluctuating nature of solar and wind energy makes energy storage essential to ensure the safe and stable operation of renewable energy projects. For Red Sea City to fully utilize renewable energy, the ESS microgrid will be a key element.
“Microgrids are not new to the power industry. However, the Red Sea microgrid is unique in that it uses only renewable energy sources and is completely unconnected to any external power grid. As a pioneer in digital technologies, Huawei is one of the few companies that provides advanced power technology, building and stabilizing the power grid through virtual synchronous machines,” said Xing.