BYD wins 11.3 GWh for world's biggest solar+storage plant
SkimNews Take
Two Chinese firms sweeping the entire 19 GWh procurement for the world's largest solar+storage plant suggests utility-scale battery markets are now structurally reliant on Chinese supply chains, not just price-competitive.
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- BYD Energy Storage won an 11.275 GWh contract for Masdar's Round the Clock project in Abu Dhabi, covering a single battery station rated at 1,644 MW / 11,275 MWh that BYD says holds more energy than most countries' entire grid-storage fleets.
- Masdar's RTC project pairs a 5.2 GW solar array with a 19 GWh battery system capable of dispatching 1 GW of continuous baseload power 24/7, making it the world's largest combined solar-plus-storage plant once built.
- Sungrow holds the remaining 7.5 GWh from an earlier phase, meaning BYD and Sungrow have together locked up the full 19 GWh — leaving no room for Western battery makers on what Electrek calls the world's flagship storage project.
- Masdar originally named CATL as its preferred battery supplier when unveiling the RTC project in early 2025, but the actual contracts went to other Chinese firms instead, with no CATL share disclosed in BYD's announcement.
- BYD's Haohan system deploys the company's 2,710 Ah Blade Battery cells, which BYD says deliver more than 300% higher capacity than legacy grid-storage cells and cut battery management system complexity by 70–80%, packing 10 MWh into a standard 20-foot container rated IP66 for desert operation.
- BYD also recently landed a 12.5 GWh grid-storage contract in Saudi Arabia and is pushing sodium-ion storage toward costs as low as $0.04 per watt-hour as Gulf storage prices collapse.
- Electrek argues BYD and CATL's advantage over competitors like Tesla stems from vertical integration — they own the full production chain from battery cells to packs to deployment.
Why it matters: Chinese battery makers have now captured 100% of the world's flagship solar+storage project, with Masdar's originally named preferred supplier (CATL) also shut out in favor of BYD and Sungrow. BYD's single 1,644 MW station exceeds most countries' total grid-storage capacity, demonstrating how the LFP cell scale originally built for EVs is now directly converting into utility-scale storage dominance.
