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Dubai’s rooftop photovoltaic (PV) solar capacity under Shams Dubai programme reached a cumulative capacity off 500 megawatts (MW) in 2022.
The information was shared by Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) on Tuesday during his speech at the World Government Summit 2023 (WGS 2023).
He said DEWA is encouraging its customers through the Shams Dubai initiative to install photovoltaic solar panels on the roofs of their buildings and facilities to meet part of their energy needs.
“By the end of 2022, the total installed capacity of the initiative reached 500MW,” he said.
Al Tayer said DEWA’s energy services subsidiary [Etihad ESCO] has retrofitted nearly 8,000 existing buildings for energy efficiency.
The Dubai Supreme Council of Energy has set an ambitious target of retrofitting 30,000 buildings by 2030, which is expected to save 1.4 TWh of electricity and 4.9 billion imperial gallons of water while reducing the equivalent of 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
Al Tayer noted that DEWA’s Green Charger initiative for establishing Electric Vehicle charging infrastructure in Dubai has installed to date over 350 charging stations across the emirate.
Other key highlights in his speech included:
- Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park’s installed production capacity currently stands at 2,027 megawatts (MW), raising clean energy’s share in Dubai’s electricity production to about 14 percent of the total capacity.
- DEWA is preparing a roadmap for Green Hydrogen Strategy, which will be implemented in phases
- DEWA SAT-2 nanosatellite will be launched this year as part of DEWA’s space programme (Space-D), which aims to enhance operational efficiency and effectiveness of electricity and water networks through nanosatellites.
- The utility is building the world’s largest carbon-neutral green data centre that will use 100 percent renewable energy at Solar Park. The data centre is being implemented by Moro Hub (Data Hub Integrated Solutions), a subsidiary of Digital DEWA.
- DEWA virtual employee ‘Rammas’, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI), answered more than 6.8 million customer enquiries since its launch in the first quarter of 2017 until the end of December 2022.
(Writing by SA Kader; Editing by Anoop Menon)
