Renewables 'historic leap' claimed with first project to provide baseload power at scale
Emirati renewable energy champion Masdar to develop facility combining solar with huge energy storage capacity
The renewables sector may soon take a historic leap with what is claimed to be the “world’s first” project that will provide 1GW of round-the-clock green power to solve the sector’s “moonshot challenge” of intermittency.
Emirati renewables giant Masdar is developing the project, which will combine 5GW of solar with 19GWh of energy storage, the developer’s chair Sultan Al Jaber announced during a speech today opening Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week.
The project, which Masdar is developing with the Emirates Water and Electricity Company, will produce 1GW of “uninterrupted clean power,” said Al Jaber.
“The biggest barrier facing renewable energy has been intermittency. It has been the moonshot challenge of our time,” he said.
“How can we power a world that never sleeps with energy sources that do? How can we transform renewable sources into reliable power.”
“Today… we have an answer.”
This will he claimed be the “world’s first renewable energy facility capable of providing renewable energy at scale around the clock.”
“This will for the first time ever transform renewable energy into baseload energy,” he said, describing it as a “first step that could become a giant leap.”
Some other wind and solar projects combined with storage have claimed to provide 24/7 power. Other green technologies like hydropower and geothermal can also provide baseload or near-baseload generation but are limited by geographical constraints. What may make this Masdar project unique is the scale at which it claims it will provide green baseload power using technologies that can be deployed anywhere.
Transitioning to power systems largely reliant on variable wind and solar is a huge challenge for countries worldwide.
Wind and solar farms tend to swing from periods of excess generation – causing curtailment of assets and negative power prices – to periods producing too little power, sending grid operators scrambling to procure electricity elsewhere.
The intermittency of renewables is also a headache for corporate offtakers, not least tech giants operating huge data centres, keen to decarbonise their power supply with 24/7 clean power.
Al Jaber also discussed the impact of artificial intelligence on power demand, saying that with the growth of applications like ChatGPT, this could hit 35TW by 2050, an increase of over 250%.
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