The world’s largest solar microgrid is being constructed to provide energy for Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Project, a vast hospitality development on the southwestern coast of Tabuk Province.
Luxury tourism megaproject
The tourism megaproject, owned by the Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund under the developer name Red Sea Global, is part of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 pivot from a fossil-fuel-driven economy to services. The initiative will see 28,000 square kilometres of Red Sea coastline across 22 islands and six inland sites completely transformed by the construction of 50 hotels, providing 8,000 rooms, as well as more than 1,000 residential buildings.
The colossal development is set to serve up to a million visitors per year, while Red Sea Global’s chief executive, John Pagano, has previously underlined the project’s objective of creating a global destination for luxury tourism.
World’s first fully clean energy destination
The project will be powered by off-grid clean energy, in the shape of the world’s largest photovoltaic (PV) energy storage grid, made by tech giant Huawei. According to Interesting Engineering, the venture will include a 400 megawatt solar PV system and a 1.3 gigawatt hour (GWh) energy storage system.
Speaking to Gulf Business, Huawei’s President of Digital Power for the region, Alex Xing, emphasised the project’s eco credentials, explaining that the Red Sea development “is poised to be the world’s first fully clean energy-powered destination, and Huawei is honoured to participate in this project and help Saudi Arabia build a greener and better future through technological innovation.”
Smart power plants
Noting the uniqueness of the Red Sea Microgrid complete reliance on renewables and disconnection from any external grid, Xing said the project would showcase Huawei’s ability to stabilise and synchronise its grids, as well as incorporating “IoT, big data, AI, and other new ICT solutions” to create “smart power plants” and provide a blueprint for how to deal with the intermittence and fluctuations usually inherent in solar and wind solutions.
The world’s leading supplier of solar photovoltaic (PV) inverters in 2022, Huawei enjoyed a 29% market share, according to Wood Mackenzie data. Its solutions in places like Dubai, China and Thailand, produced 997.9 billion kWh of green power in 2023 and cut CO2 emissions by 495 million tons. That’s the equivalent, says Interesting Engineering, of planting 680 million trees.
