Client: Confidential Middle Eastern Sovereign Wealth Fund
Duration: 2022–2023

Challenge:

The client—a sovereign wealth fund tasked with achieving national energy transition targets—was considering a multi-billion-dollar investment in a diversified renewable energy portfolio spanning wind, solar, and battery energy storage assets across MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa. These assets, although high-potential, carried significant grid integration, reliability, and policy alignment risks.

Their key concerns included:

• Whether national and regional transmission infrastructure could handle new renewable capacity.
  
• Risks related to grid code enforcement in weaker regulatory environments.
  
• Energy evacuation, curtailment potential, and exposure to frequency/voltage instability.
  
• Long-term technical sustainability of BESS assets under harsh weather conditions and load profiles.
  
• Compatibility with national energy security frameworks, including resilience against blackouts or political instability.
  

PowerTek’s Solution:

PowerTek was retained as the sovereign-level technical advisor, providing long-horizon, risk-adjusted due diligence that extended well beyond commercial vendor claims. Our work included:

• Transmission and Grid Capacity Assessments
  Assessed system stability, congestion risk, and intertie capabilities for each region using N-1/N-2 scenarios.
  
• Multi-Region Grid Code Compliance Mapping
  Benchmarked each country’s regulatory framework, identifying gaps and exposure to enforcement uncertainty.
  
• Renewable Resource Performance Stress Testing
  Simulated power output using weather volatility scenarios (e.g., sandstorms, monsoon seasons, grid disturbances).
  
• Resilience and ESG Review
  Reviewed long-term asset durability and alignment with UN SDGs, including decarbonization pathways, system resilience, and climate vulnerability.
  
• Contingency & Islanding Studies
  Evaluated each asset’s role in national energy security, with modeling for islanded operation, black start capability, and BESS performance during outages.
  

Results:

• Provided a multi-layer risk scoring matrix across all projects, flagging geographies and assets with unsustainable technical profiles.
  
• Informed the client’s go/no-go decision-making across 5+ regions and 3GW+ of potential investment.
  
• Enabled the SWF to negotiate stronger performance guarantees and step-in rights with local developers.
  

Designed a framework for ongoing monitoring and sovereign-level KPI tracking across energy reliability, ESG impact, and grid performance.