By Ndubuisi Micheal Obineme
Following the successful event, Middle East Electricity & Solar 2017, an essential event in the MEA power community’s calendar. The Middle East Power Sector is set for growth as the region has huge interest and potentials in Nuclear, Renewable Energy investment.
Informa Exhibitions positions Middle East Power Sector and Opportunities in the Spotlight through organizing the region’s largest Power and Solar gathering, featuring over 50,000 attendees worldwide. Informa is the organiser of Middle East Electricity Exhibitions and Conferences as the event creates series of features and interactive sessions duirng the event and it also creates ways to better manage Middle East Power Sector, making disparate electricity systems inter operable, installing energy management systems strategically throughout a city and investing in smart meters and grids, and then assuring an operational plan exists, improving the energy products used by cities, how to make cities 100 per cent renewable and much more.
Alongside Dubai Municipality and the Environmental Centre for Arab Towns, who are Strategic Partners for the event, the organisers created a series of new features, conferences and activations all focusing on the future of Smart Cities,and the innovations which are set to lead the way both locally and internationally in the coming decade.
Developing Smart Cities is a key focus of the Middle East energy industry, with key government projects such as the Smart Dubai initiative driving growth in this area. In terms of energy, this is crucial to improving efficiency and continuing to meet the city’s power needs. Dubai Municipality are also in the process of rolling out the ‘Smart Palm’ project, consisting of recharge stations and info points with complimentary Wi-Fi, across Dubai.
Dubai’s Smart City strategy plans to transform a thousand government services into smart services. The project aims to encourage collaboration between the public and private sectors to achieve targets in six particular focus areas: Smart Life, Smart Transportation, Smart Society, Smart Economy, Smart Governance and Smart Environment. The strategy will rely on three basic principles – communication, integration and cooperation.
The UAE is encouraging the use of electric cars and building the necessary infrastructure to support them. A number of initiatives including the development of ‘smart electrical grids’ to encourage owners of houses and buildings in Dubai to use solar energy and sell the surplus to the government through the network itself, as well as “smart meters” that contribute to economizing the consumption of electricity and water are being developed. The Dubai Plan 2021 which plans to develop Dubai into a “smart, integrated and connected city” has a strong focus on energy sustainability and using renewable energy sources. Integration of Smart Cities plans with GCC housing
projects will lead to the economizing of energy use at large.
According to news report, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has announced plan to build the GCC’s biggest hydroelectric power station near the Al Hattawi Dam as part of the plan to achieve the UAE Vision 2021. Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, Managing Director and Chief Executive of DEWA commented, “DEWA has plans to transform the UAE into one of the best countries in the world by 2021”
Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, has signed a Cooperation Agreement at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week with Qatar Electricity & Water Company (QEWC) and Nebras Power to develop renewable and sustainable energy projects. The agreement will strengthen mutual cooperation between Masdar, QEWC and Nebras in the development of commercially viable renewable energy projects in the UAE, Qatar, and international markets. It will also promote collaboration on research & development, education and raising awareness of the importance of sustainable development.
Masdar, has also acquired a stake in Hywind Scotland, a 30-megawatt (MW) floating offshore pilot wind farm in the North Sea. In the transaction Statoil and Masdar have agreed to share the development risk and Masdar will cover 25% of previous and future costs. Due to start commercial operation in late 2017, Hywind Scotland is the world’s first floating offshore wind farm. The objective of the Hywind pilot farm is to demonstrate cost efficient and low risk solutions for future commercial-scale floating wind farms.
To further showcase the recent projects execution in the region, the Construction of the 800 megawatt (MW) phase 3 of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai has commenced since 2017. A Masdar-led consortium was selected last June by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) to develop what will be the world’s largest solar park on a single plot on completion, after setting a record-low bid price for solar power generation of US2.99 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh).
Construction of the 16 square-kilometre Phase 3 expansion of the Dubai Solar Park will occur in three stages. The first 200MW stage is expected to be completed by the first half of 2018 and the next 300MW phase is due the following year, with the final 300MW tranche to come on stream in the first half of 2020.
The Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park is expected to displace an estimated 6.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum on completion in 2030.
