Four of the ten largest battery energy stationary storage (BESS) systems are located in Saudi Arabia, with the largest of these being the Saudi Electric Company’s grid-scale Bisha project.

The system uses 2,618MWh of LFP cells, requiring up to 1,700 tonnes of lithium and 3,000 tonnes of graphite anode material, equivalent to the requirements of 30,000 electric vehicle batteries.

This highlights the scale of the battery and material needs of these large energy storage projects. Grid-scale BESS systems, on average, are getting bigger year-on-year; operational BESS projects that came online in 2025 the average capacity was 218MWh, compared to 151MWh in 2024 and 112MWh in 2023 according to Rho Motion’s Battery Energy Stationary Storage Database.

The world’s largest BESS system in operation is the Edwards Sanborn solar and storage project in California with a capacity of 3,300MWh. The largest BESS system under construction, is the UAE’s Masdar solar and storage project which is due to have a capacity of 19,000MWh and set to be commissioned late 2027.

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