The Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) has updated its smart-grid strategy to improve resilience and agility and keep pace with recent developments.

Building on the success of completing 100% of the short-term goals of its 2014 to 2035 smart-grid strategy, Dewa is implementing an updated version that features a higher standard of resilience and agility to keeps pace with development and rapid changes.

HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, CEO of Dewa, praised the team efforts, which resulted in delivering the short-term goals of the strategy and updating it to move forward with the medium and long-term objectives until 2035.

He said the smart-grid programme with investments upwards of AED7bn aligned with government directives to make Dubai the smartest and happiest city in the world. It also supports the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 and the Dubai Net Zero Emissions Strategy 2050 to provide 100% of the energy production capacity from clean energy sources by 2050.

“A smart grid provides advanced features that includes interoperability across the entire electricity and water network,” said Al Tayer. “It is an integral part of Dewa’s strategy to develop state-of-the-art infrastructure for managing facilities and services according to smart and integrated systems using disruptive technologies and Fourth Industrial Revolution applications.”

Waleed Bin Salman, executive vice president at Dewa, said the smart grid strategy included the six main themes of: foundational capabilities; grid automation; smart energy and green mobility; smart water; smart grid artificial intelligence; and innovative value-added services. The themes comprise 19 smart grid capabilities.

As part of achieving the short-term goals of the strategy, Dewa replaced electricity and water meters with smart meters between 2015 and 2020. More than two million meters are automatically read, with consumption patterns provided to customers to help them manage their electricity and water usage.

Between 2015 and 2017, Dewa fully automated its transmission network connected to the 400kV and 132kV substations. In 2017, it deployed its multi-application RF mesh network across Dubai. Since then, it has expanded to provide communication to more than 4200 distribution substations. This supports smart grid applications such as electricity and water smart meters and the automation of the distribution network.