Updated: March 25, 2024

This video is the third of a trilogy of videos about the energy solution on the Dubai World Islands. In the 1st video we went to the World Islands to see the construction progress and understand what the current power solution is. In the 2nd video we spoke to subject matter experts from Glint Solar and Enerwhere about floating solar, as floating solar is one of the solutions we want to consider.

In today’s video we are doing to examine the pros and cons of 3 energy solutions for the World Islands:
1. Grid connections from the mainland,
2. 100% running on diesel generators and
3. Solar/battery/diesel-hybrid solution

Even Kvelland from Glint Solar presents the feasibility for floating solar for the Dubai World Islands.

Feras Shadid from Enerwhere presents a comprehensive comparison of the 3 potential energy solutions for the World Islands. He measured the total area of all islands
• Estimate footprint area
• Estimate energy consumption

Feras estimated the cost of procuring new equipment + running costs for 1 full year assuming 4 scenarios:
• 25, 50, 75, and 90%, and 99% share from solar.
• 25% doesn’t require any storage since all the solar energy produced during the day is directly consumed
• At 90%, it assumed that the battery will not have autonomy more than a day and that in case the solar energy is not enough, the generators will supplement the full load, which is likely to happen for around 20 days per year and the generator is likely to assist for around 40 days a year
Currently, it is estimated that, only 5% of the Islands has been constructed/under construction. We estimated the energy consumption to be around 30 GWh annually, around 1 GWh in the coldest month and roughly 4x that in the hottest month in summer (August).

Based on that for example, we have estimated that if we are to power the island with a hybrid system that will generate appx. 25% of the total annual load from solar, we will need 4.5 MWp of solar and around 10 MVA of diesel generation capacity using around 6.3 million liters of diesel annually. This system will have no storage and the total investment would be in the order of USD 5.8M. In comparison, this would consume around 8.4 million liters of diesel if it ran on generators alone. That is a difference of around 2.1 million liters annually which translates to around USD 1.1M annually at a diesel fuel price of USD 0.54 a liter. The annual O&M will be in the order of USD 0.1M.

For the same energy consumption and a 5% of total build area being occupied, if we wanted to power the islands with almost 90% solar, we will need 20 MWp of solar and around 42 MWh of battery storage, along with 7 MVA of diesel generators, however most of them will be used as backup instead of prime power. The investment will be in the order of USD 39M. In comparison this system will consume 0.8M liters of fuel, saving around 7.6M liters of fuel annually which amounts to USD 4.2M on annual savings against running on diesel alone. We will also spend around USD 0.4M annually for operations and maintenance.

In the video we are detailing further scenarios, with different completion of the World Islands and different energy solutions.