Saudi Arabia's power procurement since December has run in two directions at once: record-cheap renewables and new gas-fired capacity, tied together by grid-scale batteries. The mix is not a contradiction — it is the arithmetic of covering demand that does not follow the sun.
Over the nine months to September, Saudi Arabia has financed 15,000 megawatts of wind and solar, put a further 5,300 MW of renewable capacity in front of qualified bidders, contracted 2,313.5 MW of new gas-fired combined-cycle capacity and signed storage service agreements for roughly 2 GW and 8 GWh of grid-scale batteries. Those look like decisions pointing in different directions. They are not.
Start with the price, because it is the reason the renewable programme has the momentum it does. In the sixth round of the National Renewable Energy Program, awarded in late October, the Ministry of Energy contracted the 1,500 MW Dawadmi wind project at a levelised cost of 1.33803 US cents per kilowatt-hour and the 1,400 MW Najran solar project at 1.09682 cents. Those are contracted long-term prices supported by cheap land, exceptional irradiation, a single creditworthy offtaker and low-cost debt, but at that level no other source of energy in the Saudi system is competitive on a per-unit basis. The Kingdom expects to award around 14 GW more during 2026, against power purchase agreements already covering more than 47 GW and a stated target of up to 130 GW by 2030.
The problem renewables do not solve is availability. A solar plant produces when the sun is on it. Saudi demand does not follow that curve, and the load that is growing fastest — data centres, industrial process load, desalination — follows it least of all. Operational data centre capacity was around 467 MW in the first quarter of 2026, against a national target of roughly 1.5 GW by 2030, and that load runs flat through the night.
So the system buys two things at once. In April, ACWA Power and Saudi Energy signed a 31-year power purchase agreement with the Saudi Power Procurement Company for a 2,313.5 MW combined-cycle expansion at Rabigh, worth about SAR 11.5 billion. That followed the 7,200 MW of flexible combined-cycle capacity contracted at Rumah and Nairyah in late 2024, part of a 9,200 MW package that also included the 2,000 MW Al Sadawi solar plant — gas and solar signed on the same day, at the same ceremony, under the same programme.
The operative word in those thermal contracts is flexible. A combined-cycle plant contracted in Saudi Arabia today is not being bought to run at high load factors for 30 years. It is being bought to be available: to cover the evening ramp, to cover still, cloudy days, and to hold the system together while a very large amount of variable capacity is added. Whether it runs a lot or a little is determined by what else the system has.
Which is where storage becomes the decisive variable rather than a supporting one. Every gigawatt-hour of battery capacity moves solar output from the middle of the day into the hours when gas would otherwise have to run. The Kingdom has moved quickly here: the network utility contracted 2.5 GW and 12.5 GWh from BYD in January 2025 across Riyadh, Qaisumah, Dawadmi, Al Jouf and Rabigh, added 1 GW and 4 GWh from Hithium at Tabuk and Hail in August, and the principal buyer has now signed storage service agreements for a further 2 GW and 8 GWh. Three separate procurements, two counterparties and under three years, for a fleet that would rank among the largest outside China and the United States.
The relationship between the three is straightforward. Renewables set the energy cost. Gas sets the capacity backstop. Batteries determine how much of the backstop actually has to burn fuel. A system with a lot of storage runs its gas plants as insurance; a system with little storage runs them as workhorses. Saudi Arabia is buying enough of all three to keep that choice open, and the capture-ready specification attached to both Rabigh and the Rumah and Nairyah plants keeps one further option open at the end of it.
The timing tells you what the next four years look like. The 15 GW financed on 1 December — Bisha, Humaij, Khulis, Afif 1 and Afif 2 in solar, Starah and Shaqra in wind — is scheduled to begin operating between the second half of 2027 and the first half of 2028. Capacity awarded during 2026 will, on the same two-and-a-half-year cycle, be generating in 2029 or 2030. Almost nothing contracted from here on can contribute to the 2030 target, which is why the volume being pushed through the programme this year is being watched more closely than the identity of any winner.
The constraint that decides whether those dates hold is not generation. It is connection. The new plants sit in Al Jouf, Hail, Madinah, Asir and Najran, away from the load centres in Riyadh and the Eastern Province, and Saudi Energy has been tendering 380 kV substations and overhead lines specifically to connect them. Transmission is the slowest-moving element of the build and the least visible, and it has the power to strand contracted capacity that is otherwise ready.
What the past nine months describe, then, is not a transition in the sense of one fuel replacing another on a schedule. It is a rebuild: a generation fleet whose energy increasingly comes from wind and solar, whose reliability increasingly comes from batteries, and whose gas fleet is being renewed and expanded precisely so that it can run less of the time without the system losing anything. How much less will be settled over the next five years, by how fast the storage fleet grows and how quickly the lines get built.