Gulf solar imports fall up to 90% on Hormuz disruption

Никита ЛуценкоОснователь и CEO, SOLTECH

Rystad data shows UAE solar equipment imports fell to about 100 MW a month from March to June 2026, down nearly 90% on the 785 MW monthly average of 2025.

Gulf solar panel imports have collapsed since war disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Rystad Energy data reported on 1 September 2026 shows the UAE averaged about 100 MW of imported solar equipment a month from March to June, against 785 MW a month in 2025. Saudi Arabia's imports fell 81% to 139 MW, Oman's 89% and Iraq's 68%.

How much did Gulf solar panel imports fall, country by country

One number deserves a caveat. AGBI reports Saudi Arabia's figure as a cut of 81% "to 139MW" over the four-month period, while the UAE figure is explicitly a monthly average. The two are not stated on identical terms, so the Saudi drop is best read as a direction and a magnitude rather than a precise monthly run rate.

Why a shipping problem becomes an equipment problem

Almost every module, inverter and battery cabinet installed in the Gulf arrives by sea, and most of it arrives from China. Shipping through Hormuz was brought to a near standstill for weeks after the conflict began and remains disrupted, because no permanent deal to reopen the waterway has been reached. War-risk insurance terms tightened across Middle East voyages at the same time.

Two cost shocks landed on top of the freight problem. China withdrew its export tax rebate on solar products in April 2026, which Rystad calculates added roughly 9% to the cost of each module. Silver, used for cell metallisation because it is the most conductive metal available, also spiked. The result is a landed cost that moved in the wrong direction at exactly the moment volumes fell.

Equipment is only half the constraint. As AGBI columnist Chris Gooding has argued, grid connection and network buildout were already the binding limit in Saudi Arabia before the war began. A shipping crisis makes a delivery problem visible; it did not create it.

What it means for a project being quoted today

The practical effect is availability, not headline price. A quotation issued in Dubai this month is more likely to name a module model the installer can actually source than the one originally specified, and more likely to carry a longer delivery window. Neither shows up as a change in the price per kilowatt, which is why the disruption is easy to miss from the customer side.

For anyone modelling returns, the variable to watch is the commissioning date rather than the capex line. A three-month slip on a commercial rooftop pushes a full quarter of avoided tariff spend to the right, and on a ступенчатый тариф DEWA that quarter is usually a summer one, when the savings are largest.

Позиция SOLTECH

We think the import numbers are real and the delay forecast is soft. Rystad's three-to-twelve-month range is wide enough to be right whatever happens, and no utility, offtaker or EPC in the region has yet published a revised commercial operation date citing shipping. Until one does, treat this as a supply signal rather than a schedule.

For a villa owner in the UAE, the honest answer is that this changes almost nothing you can act on. Residential volumes are a rounding error against utility-scale procurement, and the equipment for a 10 kW rooftop is already in-country at distributors. What we would not accept is an installer using "the war" to justify a price increase on a signed quotation, or a silent substitution to a module brand that is not on the списком допущенного оборудования DEWA. Ask for the model number in writing before payment.

For a commercial or industrial owner, the exposure is real but sits in the schedule. If you are signing a BOOT or lease agreement this quarter, we would push for the commissioning date to be a dated obligation with a defined remedy, not an estimate in a covering letter, and for the module and inverter models to be named with an agreed substitution clause. That is a negotiating point available today and worth more than a small discount.

For an investor, the interesting part is the rebound Rystad describes. A pipeline that pauses and then accelerates concentrates procurement into a narrower window, and concentrated procurement is when EPC capacity, not equipment, becomes the scarce input. We would rather hold a contracted installation slot for the second half of 2027 than a cheap module quotation now. That is a judgement, and we could be wrong if Hormuz reopens cleanly and the backlog clears gradually instead.

One thing we would like to see and do not have: customs data split by module, inverter and battery. All three ship through the same lanes but have very different substitution options, and an aggregate megawatt figure hides which of them is actually the bottleneck.

Источники: AGBI - War disruption erodes Gulf solar panel imports, 1 September 2026, pv magazine - Strait and narrow, Rystad Energy analysis, 10 September 2026, AGBI - The Gulf's solar revolution is running late, August 2026.