Middle East

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority’s (DEWA) Hatta pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant is now 74% complete, and it is expected to begin operations in the first half of 2025. The facility will also store electricity from the 5 GW Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.

Teralight has completed Israel’s largest floating PV project, deploying 31 MW of capacity on two water reservoirs in the northern part of the country, at an estimated project cost of $33.8 million.

Israel has announced plans to deploy 2 GW of grid-connected renewables. It will allow for additional renewable plants to be built without causing grid congestion, based on specific parameters.

Scientists in Turkey have developed a new algorithm to optimize the efficiency of PV-powered water pumps. The novel technique is based on the Extended Kalman–Bucy filter, which is a predictor-corrector algorithm used extensively in control systems engineering for estimating unmeasured states of a process.

The novel algorithm is based on the behavior of marine animal tunicates and reportedly provides remarkable results in terms of power errors. It was tested in four PV system configurations with five different shade patterns.

Teralight has signed a 23-year power purchase agreement (PPA) for 108 MW/433 MWh of solar-plus-storage capacity. It will sell electricity to Dalia Power Energies under a tariff linked to the Israeli Electricity Authority’s regulated production tariffs.

Acwa Power and Eni have signed a hydrogen development deal, while AFC Energy has signed an agreement with Tamgo to sell hydrogen generators.

With an overall investment cost of US$182 million, the Kom Ombo plant is expected to be commercially operational in January 2024.

Solegreen plans to deploy 210 MW/470 MWh of solar-plus-storage in Israel, through a project selected by the Israeli authorities in a 2020 tender. The facilities will sell power at ILS 0.1715 ($0.0459)/kWh.

An international research group has applied for the first time integral backstepping control (IBC) as a control strategy for PV systems connected to microgrids. Through a series of simulations, the scientists found the new approach can provide better results than classic backstepping control (BC) and other techniques.