The $6 billion project is slated for completion in 2027 and is designed to deliver 1 GW of continuous power 24/7 — the equivalent of electrifying half a million homes — at a competitive price to the utility provider, Emirates Water & Electricity Co.

Solving for renewable energy intermittency “has been the moonshot challenge of our time,” Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and chairman of Masdar, said when the project was first announced in January. “This will, for the first time ever, transform renewable energy into baseload energy.”

Still, this is not the first investment in battery storage from Masdar, which has other investments in the US and the UK, where it’s part of the world’s first storage system connected to a floating offshore wind farm. The firm is looking at additional battery storage projects — potentially leveraging solar and wind energy — in Africa and Central Asia, Alobaidli said, declining to name specific partners.

Once the project is done, he said, Masdar will assess whether the batteries in this project could one day be used to kickstart power grids during blackouts, which have increasingly plagued cities around the world as heatwaves strain grids in places like California, India, and Kuwait.