Dubai, UAE: HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), visited DEWA’s Research and Development (R&D) Centre at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park. Al Tayer was briefed by the Centre’s officials on the latest projects being developed there. Al Tayer was accompanied by Waleed Bin Salman, Executive Vice President of Business Development and Excellence at DEWA, and other DEWA officials.

Al Tayer was welcomed by Dr. Ali Rashid Al Aleeli, Vice President of R&D, and staff members.

Al Tayer praised the efforts of the R&D Centre, which includes prominent Emirati researchers and specialists, in developing advanced solutions in its areas of work.

Al Tayer reviewed several innovative research projects and the R&D Centre’s key accomplishments. These include the ‘Building Demand Analysis for Customer Energy Consumption’ project, OmniHub, DEWA’s space programme (Space-D), Solar Forecasting, and the Tatweer initiative.

The staff briefed Al Tayer on the ‘Building Demand Analysis for Customer Energy Consumption’ project, which supports energy sector planners and DEWA’s business units by providing decision support tool that integrates big energy-related data on the consumer side of the grid (energy demand management), weather variables, building characteristics, and consumption data as well as short-term forecasting of energy consumption inside buildings. By having an Artificial Intelligence data-driven energy model at its core, this tool supports the development of energy strategies. This includes allowing the user to visualise the sensitivity to consumption sources, not only on the overall energy level but also in smaller clusters of regions or neighbourhoods.

The R&D Centre also explained the features and capabilities of the IoT terminal OmniHub. The terminal was designed and manufactured by DEWA’s R&D Centre. It is innovative and cost-effective, and supports multiple communication protocols such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), Long-Term Evolution Machine Type Communication (LTE CAT-M), and Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRa WAN)to ensure direct communication with multiple satellites and various terrestrial networks.

DEWA uses the digital IoT platform hosted by its data centre operated by MORO hub, the backbone of Digital DEWA, to enable remote device management and to visualise the collected data. The partnership with Moro Hub, a subsidiary of Digital DEWA, the digital arm of DEWA, for hosting the digital IoT platform adds another layer of reliability and efficiency to the project. Once the product certification process is complete and regulatory approvals are obtained, OmniHub will enhance DEWA's operations by providing reliable and secure communication channels across its sites. Omnihub demonstrated its high reliability at 4 Substation Realtime power monitoring & telemetry over the past three months.

Al Tayer also reviewed Space-D programme, which utilises space technologies to monitor the electricity and water network. DEWA has successfully launched two nanosatellites, DEWASAT-1 and DEWASAT-2, making it the first utility worldwide to launch nanosatellites. The ground station in DEWA’s R&D Centre is used to operate and communicate with the nanosatellites. Several use cases are implemented for DEWASAT-1 and DEWASAT-2, and DEWA is receiving the data continuously.

Al Tayer was briefed on the programme for improving the accuracy of future solar irradiance and electricity production forecasts from solar power plants, which is crucial for enhancing the management and reliability of the electricity grid. DEWA's solar energy forecasting platform features a forecast temporal horizon of up to 72 hours, with temporal granularity ranging from 1 to 60 minutes, and spatial resolution from 50 metres to one kilometre. This platform leverages advanced tools based on deep learning artificial intelligence, numerical modelling, and atmospheric physics and chemistry. It utilises inputs from a network of sky cameras and radiometers installed at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park and satellite images.

Moreover, the staff highlighted one of the projects under Tatweer initiative, which was implemented by the R&D Centre and the Generation Division to develop an alternative to the current standard indicators that are used in the water desalination plants before the reverse osmosis stage to determine the factors causing pollution in membranes. The new indicator will provide accurate and preventive diagnosis in order to detect all types of pollution to maintain the health of reverse osmosis membranes and in turn the quality of water and energy consumed, based on advanced sensors and new standards. DEWA’s R&D centre has established Tatweer initiative to collaborate with DEWA’s business units by solving challenges and improve existing processes through research in addition to promote a research oriented culture across DEWA.

Al Tayer also reviewed a standardised study for mobile harmonic filters, which are series or parallel resonant circuits designed to divert or block harmonic currents in a power system at the source. The project aims to study, design, build, and test a mobile harmonic filter that would solve the harmonic problems resulting from connecting customers to the DEWA grid and analyse the stress of the medium voltage network. This is through the development of an interactive tool to evaluate the stress on the network due to the increased use of photovoltaic energy and electric vehicles.

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For more information, please contact:
Shaikha Almheiri / Mohammad Almheiri / Ribal Dayekh                                                       Afaf Abaza / Mohammed Meshal
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority                                                                                   Hattlan Media
shaikha.almheiri@dewa.gov.ae / Mohammad.almheiri@dewa.gov.ae / Ribal.Dayekh@dewa.gov.ae
afaf@hattlan.com / mohammed@hattlan.com

For more information, please visit DEWA’s website www.dewa.gov.ae
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