Oman Electrochemical Energy Storage Project

Electricity market structure in Oman Unlike the electrical energy sources used in traditional power plants, renewable energy sources are not dispatchable and will vary over time; as a result, the energy feed in the network will be intermittent.

Reviewing the status of three utility-scale energy storage options: pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES), compressed air energy storage, and hydrogen storage. Conducting a techno-economic case study on utilising PHES facilities to supply peak demand in Oman.

Conducting a techno-economic case study on utilising PHES facilities to supply peak demand in Oman. This manuscript proceeds by reviewing the status of utility-scale energy storage options in Section 2. Section 3 presents the status and main challenges of Oman's MIS.

In 2015, Oman committed to an unconditional 2% emissions cut by 2030 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. This target is to be achieved through reduction in gas flaring and increase in the utilisation of renewable energy (Carbon Brief 2016 ). The third challenge of the power sector in Oman is supply mix.

The second challenge of the power sector in Oman is subsidies, which include subsidies to electricity customers and fuel subsidies to generating facilities. In 2016, financial subsidies reached OMR 389.9 million (AER 2019 ). As a percentage of the economic cost of electricity, subsidies vary between 48% in MIS and 85% in RAEC (Albadi 2017 ).

Recently, the government in Oman introduced new policy that encourages the residential sector to instal photovoltaic (PV) cells on their rooftops. This is expected to have more energy produced from PV in the future, which will be fed back to the grid.