Middle East & Africa Power Quality Equipment Market Outlook, 2031

Market Drivers

• Harmonic Limit Tightening: Saudi Arabia’s SASO reduced voltage THD limits from 8% to 5% for industrial facilities and aligned individual harmonic limits with IEC 61000-3-6, effective in 2025, creating an enforceable ceiling that renders legacy passive filtering inadequate for plants operating high concentrations of variable frequency drives. Facilities above 500 kVA face mandatory monitoring obligations, converting harmonic compliance from a design-stage assumption into a continuously verified operating condition and pulling through demand for active filters, power quality meters, and retrofit mitigation across Jubail, Yanbu, and Riyadh industrial corridors.
• Utility-Scale Grid Stability Procurement: SEC’s synchronous condenser program for renewable projects spanning 3,000 MW solar parks and 2,000 MW wind farms establishes a direct procurement channel for voltage-support equipment at the transmission interface. Kenya’s World Bank-financed STATCOM installations at Suswa and Rabai address voltage instability arising from the Ethiopia-Kenya interconnector operating above 200 MW without adequate system support, and the USD 561 million allocated to power-electronics-based reactive compensation within the GREEN program demonstrates the scale of multilateral financing directed toward grid stability equipment.

Market Challenges

• Import Dependence and Certification Burden: Saudi Arabia imports an estimated 85–90% of power quality equipment by value, exposing project timelines to cross-border logistics, tariff adjustments, and certification queues. SASO conformity assessment, G-mark scheme requirements for GCC-wide sale, and IEC 61000-4-30 Class A verification for utility interconnection create layered approval processes that extend procurement cycles and favour suppliers with established regional certification footprints, raising barriers for new entrants and constraining price competition.
• Enforcement Inconsistency Outside GCC: Egypt’s regulatory agency has adopted IEC harmonic standards but enforcement remains gradual, while Iraq and Yemen lack mandatory power quality regulations entirely, limiting the addressable market for compliance-grade equipment and creating a patchwork where procurement is driven by project-specific donor requirements rather than statutory obligation. This inconsistency fragments demand, complicates regional inventory planning for suppliers, and leaves a substantial share of Africa’s grid-connected load outside any enforceable power quality framework.

Market Trends

• Permanent Monitoring Infrastructure: SEC and the Electricity and Cogeneration Regulatory Authority require power quality monitoring at all grid interconnection points for renewable projects above 1 MW, with compliance testing during commissioning and ongoing periodic reporting. DEWA has procured online power quality monitoring systems and issued tenders for intelligent monitoring platforms, while South Africa’s NRS 048 requires metering data availability for 95% of the year per individual metering point, translating into a maximum data loss of 18 days annually. Monitoring has become continuous compliance infrastructure rather than a diagnostic accessory.
• Integrated Stability and Storage Controls: Grid-scale battery installations in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman require real-time power quality data for inverter operation, state-of-charge management, and grid code compliance, creating demand for combined monitoring and battery management platforms. SEC’s grid connection of a 7.8 GWh battery storage project, with National Grid SA as offtaker, signals that storage is entering the utility asset base at scale, and the control architecture linking conditioning equipment to storage dispatch is becoming a specification differentiator. Suppliers offering unified power quality and storage control solutions are positioned to capture value as storage penetration rises.