DEWA’s pilot project to enhance energy storage!

DUBAI: As part of its efforts to diversify Dubai’s energy mix and improve energy storage technologies, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has inaugurated a pilot project for energy storage at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park using Tesla’s lithium-ion battery solution.

The project has a power capacity of 1.21 MW and an energy capacity of 8.61 MWh with a life span of up to 10 years.

“Our strategy and work plans are guided by the vision and directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to ensure energy security and sustainability. We have an integrated vision to achieve these directives with three main pillars: The first is to produce more clean energy, especially solar energy, under the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050. The second is to decouple the desalination process from the production of electricity and desalinate water using a combination of clean energy sources and waste heat. The third is disrupting the role of utilities using Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, such as AI, UAVs, energy storage, blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT) and many more,” said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD, and CEO of DEWA.

Al Tayer noted that DEWA is implementing other energy storage projects. These include using Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) in the construction of the 4th phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, which combines CSP and photovoltaic solar panels with a production capacity of 950MW. The project will have the world’s largest global thermal storage capacity of 15 hours, ensuring energy availability round the clock. DEWA is also building a 250MW pumped-storage hydroelectric power station in Hatta, the first of its kind in the Arabian Gulf region. It will generate electricity using the water stored at Hatta Dam, with a storage capacity of 1,500 MWh. In collaboration with Expo 2020 Dubai and Siemens Energy, DEWA has also inaugurated the Green Hydrogen project, the first of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa to produce green hydrogen using solar power. The project began at the outdoor testing facilities of DEWA’s R&D Centre at the solar park.

Waleed Bin Salman, Executive Vice President of Business Development and Excellence at DEWA, said that the lithium-ion energy storage pilot project is the second battery energy storage pilot project carried out by DEWA at the solar park. The first project was implemented in collaboration with AMPLEX–NGK to install and test a sodium sulphur (NaS) energy solution, with a power capacity of 1.2 MW and an energy capacity of 7.5 MWh. This was the first utility-scale energy storage pilot project in the region.

Bin Salman said that both pilot systems allow bi-directional charging from grids and/or solar plants, and then discharged back to grids.

WAM