Opportunities of renewable energy supply to NEOM City

NEOM (New Future) will be renewable energy (REN)-only city built in Saudi Arabia along the red sea coast. Wind and solar energy supplies are supposed to cover the full energy demand. Because of variability and unpredictability, wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) needs massive battery energy storage (BES) economically and environmentally unaffordable. The Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) from solar PV may be as low as 5 ¢/kWh, but the additional BES needed may account for 28 ¢/kWh. Similar costs are offered by wind, which is less promising than solar for NEOM City. Thus, the backbone solution is the use of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants solar tower (ST) with thermal energy storage (TES) by molten salt (MS). A 95% annual average capacity factor (CF) may be supplied by an ST plant with 16 hours of TES at an LCOE of 7.84 ¢/kWh. The optimal design of a REN-only grid for NEOM City is thus a mix of cheaper but intermittent and unpredictable solar PV and wind electricity, the proposed CST ST with TES of higher cost but enhanced dispatchability and a limited number of batteries.