A Case Study of a Stand-Alone AC and DC Power Network in the Red Sea New City, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

A photovoltaic (PV) and battery-based energy system can provide the necessary and sufficient electric power to off-grid power system networks due to the technological advancements in both performance improvement and lower system cost. The absence of reactive power in direct current (DC) power system networks has several advantages over corresponding alternating current (AC) power system networks. In this paper, we have investigated a case study for the PV farm coupled with a battery energy storage system (BESS) as a stand-alone power system network in the Red Sea New City, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study consists of two cases, which are the DC battery coupling configuration for the AC power network system and the end-to-end DC (EEDC) configuration for the power network system. Using the same size of solar PV farm and battery storage, we have compared the performance of the two case configurations of different power system networks after thirty years of operation. The results show that implementing the EEDC power system network has a major advantage in improved energy efficiency of the power system (directly related to cost-effectiveness) and lower capital investment of the power system that includes electric power generation, transmission, distribution, and utilization for all applications, including artificial intelligence-based data centers.