ACWA Power has agreed to deploy wind energy and battery capacity to help power what is claimed will be the Middle East and Africa region’s ‘first battery gigafactory.’
The Saudi Arabian power producer and developer has signed a joint development agreement with Gotion Power, Chinese battery manufacturer Gotion High-Tech’s subsidiary in Morocco, for a 500MW wind power plant with 2,000MWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) technology.
The project will feed energy to Gotion Power’s new electric vehicle (EV) battery gigafactory in the northwestern Moroccan city of Kenitra. The renewables-plus-storage plant has an expected investment cost of around US$800 million, ACWA Power said.
ACWA Power announced the Gotion agreement late last month, along with two financing deals and an R&D collaborative effort, that the developer signed at a recent event hosted by the Future Investment Initiative, a non-profit organisation run by Saudi Arabia’s PIF sovereign wealth fund.
The deals have a claimed total value of US$1.78 billion, and include a US$690 million framework agreement with the National Bank of Kuwait for financing ACWA Power projects in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
There was also a US$240 million equity bridge loan agreement with the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) to finance two solar-plus-storage projects in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Meanwhile, the company also signed a cooperation agreement with Lujiazui Administrative Bureau, a state agency overseeing the development of a new financial services hub in Shanghai, China, for the construction of an R&D centre in Shanghai.
The centre would focus on advancing solar, wind, energy storage, hydrogen and desalination technologies and cost around US$54 million, ACWA Power said.
