Making a large-scale transition to clean power in the region is economically challenging because of energy subsidies. But a German expert has found a viable middle ground.
DUBAI // Daniel Zywietz arrived in the UAE in 2008, hoping to kick-start the country’s dream of realising its ambitious clean-power objectives.
The German renewable energy expert worked with utility suppliers from around the region as well as Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s clean energy company, the first in the Arabian Gulf to declare substantial renewable energy ambitions.
Two years later, his initial enthusiasm was curbed slightly by the realisation that “the economics were not there” for a large-scale transition to solar power.
“People wanted to do renewables but when they compared the cost of what they were trying to do with the subsidised price of energy in the region, the gap was too big,” said Mr Zywietz.
“The amount of government funding that would have been required to bridge that gap and to make these investments attractive would have been massive.”
As the industry shifted focus towards Saudi Arabia, which announced its plans for large-scale solar power in 2010, Mr Zywietz began to question his role.
“I really said, ‘look I need to get out of here, I am going to do the same thing again for three years, do the exact same studies again, just 10 times bigger with exactly the same result, which is very little’,” he recalled.
This was how his search began for a clean technology that could be used by the private sector.
Mr Zywietz co-founded Enerwhere, a Dubai-based company that has created a cleaner alternative to diesel generators.
He realised that a surprisingly large number of companies were using diesel generators, paying “insanely high” prices that, in some cases, were 10 times that of grid electricity.
Diesel generators also create a lot of pollution.
Indeed, they are worse than coal-fired power plants because they are completely unfiltered and unregulated, according to Mr Zywietz.
“There are no emission standards in this region, so people buy the cheapest and dirtiest generators they can find,” he said.
Enerwhere’s self-developed generators still rely on diesel for their base fuel.
However, they also have photovoltaic panels to convert sunlight into electricity.
Rather than selling generators, Enerwhere charges clients for the electricity consumed.
The first generator was deployed on an island off Dubai in February last year.
Last summer, Enerwhere installed a system with a capacity of 4.5 megawatts (MW) and a small solar field of 200 kilowatts at the Saadiyat Accommodation Village, which serves the Tourism Development and Investment Company in Abu Dhabi.
It later added 150 kilowatts of solar power.
The facility houses 8,000 labourers and has desalination and sewage treatment plants, air-conditioning equipment and kitchens.
During winter, when there is no demand for air-conditioning, the system uses only 1MW from diesel, meaning about 30 per cent of the electricity used comes from solar power.
Mr Zywietz plans to install more clean-energy generators across the UAE and abroad, while increasing the amount of solar energy they produce.
“As the price of solar is coming down and as the price of batteries is coming down, we can increase the solar share up to 100 per cent,” he said.
“Right now, it is fundamentally a question of batteries and how much night-time consumption you have.”
He expects the impact of his work to increase in the UAE in the future.
“Now it is time to scale up and actually make a dent,” he said.
“In the end, 5MW or 10MW is still a minuscule amount of solar compared to the installed conventional power capacity in the region.
“But with the right business model and economics, this can go quite quickly.”
vtodorova@thenational.ae
