Dubai: Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) will encourage residences to use solar panels in line with the emirate’s initiatives to become a smart city, Saeed Mohammad Al Tayer, MD and CEO of Dewa said.
“This initiative will help reduce energy demand by 30 per cent by 2030 and diversify the energy mix of the emirate with 15 per cent from solar power at the same date,” he said.
The first pilot connections of the solar panel has been made over last month in Dubai Airport building and now it is open for customers and they can express their interest though through Dewa ‘One Window Application,’ which will be used to mange customer interactions within the program, according to Al Tayer.
“Dewa will enable the connection of distributed solar panels into its grid under the Distributed Renewable Resources Programme,” he said.
Households and building owners can install photovoltaic solar panels to produce electricity and use it within their own premises for private consumption. The surplus will be exported to Dewa’s grid, according to Al Tayer.
To facilitate use of solar panels, Dewa has developed a regulatory framework for this programme including technical standard for the equipment and connection procedures.
This was one of three smart initiatives Dewa launched last year to support the vision of Dubai becoming the smartest city in the world.
Transforming the existing electricity and water meter into smart one is the second initiative. Al Tayer said that Dewa will install 200,000 Smart meters by the end of 2015.
“Smart meters will support the installation of renewable source of energy in residential, commercial and industrial sector, by comparing energy usage between consumption and generation,” he said.
Developing the required infrastructure for electric vehicles is the third smart initiative that Dewa is working on.