F1 track goes green with solar tower

Integrated within Shams Tower will be a solar system capable of producing 450 megawatt hours of electricity a year.

Laborers work around the clock to finish the Yas Island project.

ABU DHABI // A Formula One race track echoing to the roar of 20 fast cars flown in from around the world may not be the likeliest place to prompt thoughts of climate change. Yet, when fans flock to Yas Island for the first Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in November, they will be able to see not only F1 cars but also the future of green energy in Abu Dhabi.

Integrated within Shams Tower, a 60-metre-high building that will give VIPs unrivalled views of the racetrack, the solar system will be capable of producing 450 megawatt hours of clean electricity annually, enough to save 400 tonnes of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere each year. Construction is already under way on the tower and the project is handled by Enviromena, the Abu Dhabi-based company behind the country's first solar power plant, built on behalf of Masdar City, the world's first carbon-neutral urban development being built on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.

The two projects share one thing - the new F1 solar system will be relying on Chinese-supplied photovoltaic panels that already provide half the power at the Masdar City solar power plant, which started feeding Abu Dhabi's electricity grid earlier this year. "We know they work well in the Abu Dhabi conditions," Sander Trestain, vice president of technical at Enviromena. But the similarities between Yas Island and Masdar City end there, he said. The Masdar City facility follows the design of a conventional solar plant, which generates electricity that is fed into the grid.

The Shams Tower system, located alongside car parking shades running from the two sides of the building, generates power that will be used within the building itself. "This is a very different type of solar system," he said. Spread over 2,500 square metres, the 1,120 solar panels will not meet all the building's energy needs. But, said Mr Trestain, if more buildings had similar features, the effect could be significant.

"A large amount of the cost of delivering electricity to homes and offices is the cost of transporting it," he said. "We want to promote adding a little bit of solar to buildings. That will reduce the overall demand on the grid." How much of a building's electricity can be generated on site using solar energy depends on a complex set of factors, which include the building's size and its design. "You can generate quite a bit - with one extreme being Masdar City, which is clearly an exceptional case as it is very efficiently designed," he said.

Masdar City will derive most of its power from solar energy. The less advanced structures that are now the norm can generate anywhere from one to 20 per cent of their power on site, said Mr Trestain. "The fundamental point is that if we start putting these modest-size systems in new buildings and retrofitting them in old ones, we can as an aggregate make a very large chunk of electricity," he said.

"We will see more of this as Abu Dhabi continues the work to meet its seven per cent renewable energy target," he said. "A lot of developers are trying to find ways to very aesthetically add solar power to their buildings." The project is scheduled for completion in early September and is expected to start work later that month. Enviromena is executing the project on behalf of the developer Aldar.