Saudi Arabia owned Nusaned Investment and German firm Schmid Group have formed a joint venture to establish a 3GWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) manufacturing facility in the Western Asia kingdom.
The joint venture (JV) between Nusaned Investment (investment firm owned by petrochemical company Sabic) and VRFB company Schmid will focus on manufacturing and developing VRFB systems.
With R&D facilities in Germany and Saudi Arabia, the JV plans to begin construction of the Saudi facility in the next two months, and be in production next year. The JV’s products will be offered under the Everflow brand.
The JV will produce energy storage systems (ESS) for use alongside utility-scale renewables projects, telecom towers, mining sites, remote cities and off-grid locations.
The systems will be used for renewables capacity grid integration, establishment of mini grids at remote locations, optimisation of diesel generator capacity, and power back-up.
The 3GWh facility will be among the biggest flow battery production facilities worldwide and is the latest stage of an agreement signed in May 2019 to establish an advance ESS investment company.
The Riwaq Industrial Development Company will join the JV as additional investors and shareholders.
Saudi Arabia aims to install 57.5GW of renewable capacity in the Kingdom by 2030.
The proposed manufacturing facility and R&D center is going to be developed in Dammam 3rd Industrial City. The facility will be built under a Build-to-Suit lease agreement with Modon (Saudi Authority for Industrial Cities and Technology Zones).