Construction has started on the three utility-scale Saudi battery storage sites that Gotion High-Tech will supply, the company said on 5 October. The sites — Al-Muwaih and Haden in Makkah province and Al-Kahafa in Hail — are each 500 MW and 2,000 MWh, giving the Chinese cell maker 6 GWh of the kingdom’s first 8 GWh utility-scale storage tender. That is 75% of the round, and it makes the Middle East the centre of gravity of Gotion’s international storage business rather than a footnote to it.
What Gotion Won in the Saudi Battery Storage Tender
The procurement was run by the Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC), the kingdom’s central buyer for generation and storage. In August 2026 SPPC signed build-own-operate agreements for four standalone battery projects, each configured identically at 500 MW and 2,000 MWh, under 15-year service agreements that begin at each project’s commercial operation date. The winning bidders took full equity in the project companies rather than a supply contract.
Three of the four went to a consortium of Saudi Energy Company, ACWA Power and Al Sharif Contracting and Commercial Development Company. Gotion was selected as the battery energy storage system supplier across all three. The fourth project, Al-Kushaybi in Qassim province, went to a separate consortium involving Engie and Haji Abdullah Alireza & Co., and is not part of Gotion’s scope.
The tender itself drew serious interest: 33 bidders qualified, among them Masdar, ACWA Power, EDF and TotalEnergies. Gotion’s share of it is the first large-scale international deployment of Gotion Grid, the company’s utility-scale storage system, and it is the first time the company has supplied a sovereign storage programme at this scale outside China.
| Project | Province | Power / energy | Gotion scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Al-Muwaih | Makkah | 500 MW / 2,000 MWh | BESS supply |
| Haden | Makkah | 500 MW / 2,000 MWh | BESS supply |
| Al-Kahafa | Hail | 500 MW / 2,000 MWh | BESS supply |
| Al-Kushaybi | Qassim | 500 MW / 2,000 MWh | Not in scope (Engie-led consortium) |
A 25-Year Cell Sold Against a 15-Year Contract
The specifications Gotion has published are the interesting part, because they are written for a contract structure rather than for a specification sheet.
The system is rated for −30 °C to 55 °C, with a thermal management design the company says maintains full output during sandstorms and reduces high-temperature degradation by 40% against conventional systems. All three sites connect to Saudi Arabia’s 380 kV transmission backbone and can be operated remotely. An AI-driven battery management layer handles dispatch, early warning and lifecycle diagnostics.
The headline number is the design life: 25 years, against what Gotion describes as an industry range of 15 to 20 years. Read against the contracts, that is 1.43 times the midpoint of the industry range — and more to the point, it is a claim about avoiding a mid-life equipment replacement on an asset that a developer has to own and operate for decades. That is the same logic that has been driving the long-duration storage conversation elsewhere: the asset, not the cell, is what has to survive the contract.
It is also worth being precise about what a 25-year figure is. It is a design service life, and the arithmetic only holds under a stated duty cycle. A four-hour asset doing one cycle a day is a very different load from one doing two, and the number should be tested against the operating profile rather than quoted as a guarantee.
The Saudi Battery Storage Value Figure Two Trade Sites Got Wrong
Two English trade write-ups of the award state that Gotion’s share of the contracts is worth approximately US$1.16 billion. That figure belongs to the whole programme, not to Gotion’s three sites, and the arithmetic shows it.
The three agreements Gotion supplies are worth approximately SAR 3.25 billion, or about US$866 million, for 6 GWh. The full four-project Group 1 programme is worth about SAR 4.35 billion, or roughly US$1.16 billion, for 8 GWh. Divide either by its own storage capacity and you get the same answer:
- $866m ÷ 6 GWh = $144/kWh
- $1.16bn ÷ 8 GWh = $145/kWh
Two scopes, two totals, one rate per kilowatt-hour — which is exactly what you would expect if the numbers describe the same programme at different boundaries, and not what you would expect if Gotion’s share really were the larger figure. The $1.16 billion figure is the programme. Gotion’s slice is the smaller one.
Treat that $144/kWh carefully in either direction. It is contract value divided by storage capacity, not a battery price: it includes development, financing, construction, grid connection and a fifteen-year service obligation, on a build-own-operate structure where the developer takes equity. It is a useful way to size a sovereign storage programme, and a misleading way to estimate what an hour of storage costs to build.
Where Saudi Arabia Fits in the Storage Map
The tender is one round of a much faster-moving market than its size suggests. Saudi Arabia led global utility-scale battery installations in July 2026 on its own, with 2.5 GW and 12.5 GWh commissioned in a single month. SPPC has already begun qualifying bidders for a second build-own-operate tender covering 3 GW and 12 GWh — half again the size of the first round, opened before the first round’s projects have broken ground.
Both rounds are buying four and five-hour assets rather than the two-hour configuration that dominated the early storage market. That places the kingdom at the opposite end of the duration spectrum from assets like the 850 MW Waratah Super Battery in Australia, which runs at just under two hours and earns its return from a system-strength contract rather than from energy shifting. Same industry, two different products.
Sequential sovereign tenders at this scale are also becoming the way storage capacity actually gets built, rather than a market assembled project by project. India’s Green Energy Corridor programme is running the same play — 50 GWh of storage approved inside a $19.3 billion grid package — with the same advantage and the same risk: a state buyer can commit volume quickly, and a state buyer sets the schedule.
For Gotion, the regional arithmetic is more striking than the individual project. The company puts its Middle East and North Africa footprint at roughly 9 GWh — the three Saudi sites, about 1.5 GWh of supply in Egypt alongside a planned 3 GWh local manufacturing base, and a 1.2 GWh project in Morocco with ACWA Power. Its stated cumulative system-level storage projects worldwide, meanwhile, are described as exceeding 10 GWh. If both figures are accurate, MENA accounts for the overwhelming majority of Gotion’s international storage business, which makes this tender less a new market entry than a business that has become concentrated in one region.
The rest of the international book is thin by comparison: a 281 MW / 843 MWh solar-plus-storage project under construction in Australia, expected to reach commercial operation in the first half of 2027. Gotion’s storage story outside China is, for now, a Middle East story — a position it shares with much of the Chinese storage industry, which has been shipping export consignments into the region at an accelerating pace, including HiTHIUM’s first Heze-base export to Israel in September.
What This Does Not Tell You
Gotion has disclosed the scope of the supply but not what it is actually shipping. There is no cell model, no capacity per container, no cell supplier named, and no indication of whether the cells come from Gotion’s Chinese lines or its overseas plants. For a programme explicitly designed around a 25-year asset life, the cell chemistry and the warranty terms behind that number are the two things a reader would most want and neither has been published.
There is also no delivery schedule beyond the fact of construction starting, no disclosed price per kilowatt-hour for the equipment itself, and no confirmation of which entity carries performance risk if the 25-year claim falls short. And the counterparties are worth noting: the offtaker is a state procurement body and the developer consortium is taking equity under a fifteen-year contract, which means the schedule risk on these projects sits with the consortium rather than with the supplier.
What is verifiable is narrower and still significant. A Chinese battery maker has been selected to supply three quarters of the first utility-scale storage tender in a market that commissioned more grid batteries in one month this year than most countries have built in total, and it is selling that market a cell designed for a contract length the industry has not previously had to serve.
The Bottom Line: Construction has begun on three Saudi battery storage sites that Gotion High-Tech will supply with 6 GWh of equipment — 75% of the kingdom’s first 8 GWh utility-scale storage tender, worth about $866 million, or $144 per kWh of storage capacity on our arithmetic. Gotion is selling a 25-year design life and a −30 to 55 °C operating range into a market that commissioned 2.5 GW and 12.5 GWh in July alone and has already opened a second tender for 3 GW and 12 GWh. The company has not published a cell model, a supplier, a delivery schedule or warranty terms, and the $1.16 billion figure attached to this order in two English trade write-ups is the programme total, not Gotion’s share.
Notes: Gotion’s system specifications — the 25-year design life, the −30 to 55 °C range, the 40% degradation reduction and the 380 kV connection — are company claims and have not been independently verified or tested by EVsays. The $144 and $145 per kWh figures, the 75% share and the 1.43x design-life comparison are our calculations from published contract values and capacities, not disclosed figures, and the per-kWh rate is contract value rather than equipment price. The 9 GWh MENA footprint and the >10 GWh global total are both company statements, so the share between them is an inference rather than a disclosed ratio. Reporting of the construction start came from Chinese-language coverage of the 5 October start; no English-language report of that specific milestone had been published at the time of writing, and the project parameters were cross-checked against English trade coverage of the August award. Chinese-language coverage of Gotion’s September shipment to Egypt described the Nefertiti and Horus projects as 1.8 GWh, while the company’s regional total implies a 1.5 GWh scope; we have used the company figure and note the difference. EVsays did not attend any event, has not visited the sites and has no relationship with Gotion or the consortium. See our editorial policy and correction policy.
Sources & Further Reading
- Best Magazine — “Gotion wins 6 GWh Saudi battery storage deal” — the project names and configuration, the 9 GWh MENA footprint, the Egypt and Morocco projects, the Australia pipeline, the 40% degradation-reduction claim and the 380 kV grid connection.
- Next Move Strategy Consulting — “Gotion to Supply 6GWh BESS for Saudi Arabia’s First Tender” — the SPPC award structure and 15-year build-own-operate agreements, the 75% share, the second 3 GW / 12 GWh tender, and Saudi Arabia’s 2.5 GW / 12.5 GWh of July 2026 commissioning. Note: this write-up gives Gotion’s share as US$1.16 billion, which is the programme total.
- Business Enquirer — “Gotion Secures 6GWh Saudi Battery Storage Deal” — the identity of the winning consortium and the separate Engie-led award for Al-Kushaybi, the 33 qualifying bidders, and the same US$1.16 billion attribution.
- SaudiGulf Projects — “Gotion High-Tech to Supply 6 GWh BESS Systems for Saudi Arabia’s First Utility-Scale Battery Storage Programme” (September 2026) — the source of the SAR 3.25 billion ($866 million) value for the three agreements and the SAR 4.35 billion ($1.16 billion) value for the full Group 1 programme, which is the basis for the value correction above. The page was unreachable when we checked and is listed for verification.
- Shanghai Jiading / Shangguan News (上海嘉定 / 上观新闻), 5 October 2026 — the start of construction on the three Saudi sites and the quotations from Gotion chairman Li Zhen describing the desert-specific design and a −30 to 55 °C operating range.
- Gotion High-Tech (国轩高科) — company statements on the Saudi supply scope, the Gotion Grid utility-scale system and the Middle East and North Africa project list. Gotion’s own newsroom does not publish an accessible press-release archive for this award.
