The International Solar Alliance (ISA), a treaty-based organisation working towards promoting solarisation globally, is working with the UAE to study the prospects for a global solar grid connecting the solar-rich Middle East to solar markets across the world, a top ISA official said.  

“ISA has just embarked upon a flagship project on creating a spine or grid link between the Middle East and to places where there are markets. We are looking to start with the UAE in the first phase and there is no reason why it can’t be extended to other countries (in the Gulf). The study will hopefully commence this month and we would like the first results to be out in the next few months,” said Dr Ajay Mathur, Director General, ISA in an exclusive interview. 

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Dr Ajay Mathur, Director General, International Solar Alliance (ISA)

“It is an approach study to provide costs at a very macro level and look at the kinds of technical, political, economic and social issues we need to address as we move ahead. We hope that it would provide us with the kind of learning that is needed to take this linkage of demand and supply in the years ahead,” he told Zawya Projects. 

“The Middle Eastern countries are the sunniest regions of the world and are capable of producing solar electricity and solar hydrogen at the lowest costs in the world. ISA will work with them to see how this can happen,” he said.  

The One Sun One World One Grid (OSOWOG) is ISA’s flagship project that aims to connect the world through a solar electricity grid. The study was awarded to a consortium comprising French state-run power utility firm Électricité de France SA (EDF), India’s The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and France’s Application Europeenne de Technologies et de Services (AETS) in January 2021.  

(Reporting by Sowmya Sundar; Editing by Anoop Menon) 

(anoop.menon@refinitiv.com) 

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