SOLAR ENERGY IN SAUDI ARABIA: CURRENT STATUS, CHALLENGES, AND STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITIES UNDER VISION 2030

The Vision 2030 initiative by Saudi Arabia has redefined the role of solar energy from an obscure technology to an enabling technology for Saudi Arabia’s energy, economic, and environmental security. This review article attempts to synthesize existing literature on solar energy in Saudi Arabia published between 2020 and 2025 to determine the status of solar energy in Saudi Arabia, the existing barriers to solar energy implementation, and the opportunities to support Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. This review article adopts a PRISMA protocol [1] to review existing literature on utility-scale photovoltaic, distributed photovoltaic, concentrated solar power, desert performance, grid integration, and industrialization. The review of existing literature indicates that Saudi Arabia’s national plans are geared towards the implementation of utility-scale photovoltaic, concentrated solar power, and the parallel commitment to increasing the share of renewable energy in the national energy mix to about half by 2030 [2, 3]. The review of existing literature indicates that project implementation has been expedited by competitive tendering and public-private partnerships, with flagship projects such as Sakaka and Sudair indicating Saudi Arabia’s commitment to moving from targets to implementation [4, 16, 17]. The review of existing literature indicates that Saudi Arabia’s solar energy performance is limited by factors such as desert-specific factors like dust storms, aerosol dimming, and module temperature, as well as solar energy system-specific factors like grid flexibility, permitting, bankability, and local supply chain readiness [20, 23, 24, 25]. The review of existing literature indicates that the next steps in Saudi Arabia’s solar energy implementation are less about determining the feasibility of solar energy implementation and more about orchestrating reliable scale, standardizing land and grid interfaces, industrializing O&M and land cleaning, integrating PV with storage and demand response, and localizing high-value PV value chain activities. A research roadmap could be suggested to enhance comparability, address gaps in existing literature on operational yields in different provinces, and support decision-making.