On a vast tract of arid flat land around 50 km south of Dubai, serried ranks of photovoltaic (PV) panels stretch as far as the eye can see. Mohammed bin Rashid (MBR) Al Maktoum solar park is already the world’s biggest single site installation of its kind, but in the UAE, nothing is done by halves. Details emerged this month of a further enormous expansion – the sixth phase – which is expected to add a further 1,800 MW capacity.

The plant already produces more than 2,400 MW, 16.3% of all the electricity produced across Dubai Emirate. The sense is of the UAE being a country in a hurry – even more so as it’s hosting COP28 at the end of the year. What more virtuous signal of intent could there be?

It’s hard to imagine that a decade ago not one solar panel sat on that site. A veteran UAE PR consultant recalls a visiting CEO in the early 2000s asking what green industries there were in the UAE. ‘Absolutely none,’ he replied. But then, of course, there was far less sense of urgency about climate change.

The country relies entirely on electricity to provide drinkable water through desalination. In the first six months of 2023, demand for power and water from DEWA was up 3% and 5% respectively. As new developments continue apace, this is sure to increase.

Dubai is working overtime to cultivate a green image, but this doesn’t always sit easily with its position as a vast producer and exporter of oil. 

The [UAE] relies entirely on electricity to provide drinkable water through desalination – in the first six months of 2023, demand for power and water from Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) was up 3% and 5% respectively.

The MBR solar park  
A trip to MBR solar park is marked with pomp and ceremony. Visitors are ushered up to an impressive auditorium. The lights are dimmed and on a wraparound cinema screen, a short promo film, plangent strings soaring in the background, whisks through the plant’s milestones and aspirations. Then there’s a briefing in which the audience is assailed by facts and figures; then a short Q&A session.

MBR’s story is one of phased development based on the independent power producer (IPP) model – a private entity that produces electricity for sale to utilities or the general public. Initiated by DEWA, the first phase was built by US technology firm First Solar in 2013.

The second phase, which became operational in 2017, is the fruit of a consortium led by ACWA Power, the Saudi Arabia-based developer of power and desalination plants, and Spanish company TSK. They put up 2.3mn PV panels spread over 4.5 km² – a statement of ambition and precursor of more to come.

As soon it did. Phase 3, created through a consortium led by Abu Dubai Future Energy Company (Masdar) and EDF, is said to be the first of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to use an advanced tracking system, enabling it to increase generation by 20–30% compared with fixed installation. This became fully operational in 2020.

And so to Phase 4, which DEWA hails as the largest single-site project combining concentrated solar power (CSP) and PV technologies. With CSP, parabolic trough collectors in the form of mirrors create electricity from heat rather than sunlight (as with PV technology). A central tube concentrates the heat from direct solar irradiation, which then produces steam to drive a conventional turbine.

Of its 950 MW capacity, 700 MW derives from CSP – 600 MW from the parabolic basin complex, and a further 100 MW from a solar tower 260 metres high. The project included a 15-hour molten-salt energy storage capacity; and a further 250 MW of PV panels was added.

DEWA chose ACWA Power and Gulf Investment Corporation as its partner to create Phase 5, expanding MBR’s PV capacity by a further 900 MW. As it has unfolded year by year, the project has set records for ever-lower prices per kilowatt hour (kWh) and that’s expected to be the outcome of Phase 6 following the £1.1bn agreement just struck between DEWA and Masdar.

This phase is due to become operational, in stages, from the end of 2024, and offer a levelised cost of energy around £1.30/kWh. Another massive PV development, it’s predicted that this expansion will power more than half a million homes.

Artist’s impression of part of the Al Maktoum solar park
Photo: DEWA
  
Among other developments, Siemens Energy, DEWA and Expo 2020 Dubai have collaborated to establish the region’s first solar-powered green hydrogen plant at MBR’s R&D centre. By day the plant harnesses electricity, enabling green hydrogen to be produced by the electrolysis of water. This can be stored and re-electrified, allowing for both fast response and long-term storage.

Panel cleaning  

One R&D priority is to improve PV technologies, not least to mitigate the impact of extreme conditions on how solar panels perform – deserts make for a punishing environment.

While their black surface absorbs most of the sunlight reaching them, only around 15% gets converted to electricity. The rest is returned to the environment as heat. There’s another problem – particulate matter attaching itself, whether through soiling or atmospheric pollution. The former can reduce PV generation by half; the latter by up to two thirds.

Cleaning the solar panels is essential; yet a scarcely imaginable slog beneath the desert sun. The solution at MBR is to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) as part of an advanced system, using automatic cleaning robots to operate and maintain the bifacial PV panels.

Despite a push towards self-sufficiency in terms of power generation, that doesn’t extend to the UAE manufacturing panels. ‘Currently they’re cheap and, since COVID, the price of shipping has dropped so we can get them for an even better price,’ a DEWA spokesman told New Energy World. Shipping, however, is of itself an energy-consuming and polluting process.

Other areas of research underway at MBR include developing systems to discover the best means of integrating renewables and maintaining power quality. This encompasses the use of electricity storage systems (chemical, thermal and mechanical technologies).

Next door Abu Dhabi  
Dubai’s neighbour, Abu Dhabi, has also made enormous strides in pursuing solar. In fact, MBR had yet to get off the ground when Abu Dhabi’s Shams 1 – then the world’s largest concentrated solar plant – opened in 2013. Covering 2.5 km², it has the capacity to feed 100 MW of electricity into the national grid. A joint venture between Masdar (60%), Total (20%) and Abengoa (20%), its claim to fame is being the Middle East’s first utility-scale commercial solar project.

This triggered something of a dash to harness the sun. By 2019 Abu Dhabi boasted of being home to the world’s largest stand-alone operational solar plant, Sweihan, with a capacity of 1.2 GW and more than 3.3 million solar panels. Owned and operated by Sweihan PV Power Company (SPPC), it supplies energy through a long-term power purchase agreement with the Emirates Water and Electricity Company (EWEC).

In 2020 Abu Dhabi Electricity and Water Authority announced an even bigger project, the 2.1 GW Al Dhafra solar park, a 20 km² PV plant 35 km south of Abu Dhabi City. Built through a consortium led by EDF and Chinese firm JinkoSolar, and using bifacial (dual-sided) crystalline technology, it opened this year and supplies about 160,000 households.

The total PV installed capacity in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, is now around 3.2 GW. Yet for all its avowed intention to become carbon neutral by 2050, the UAE still seems addicted to building gargantuan towers, sprawls of housing and eight-lane motorways. In 2020, according to the latest available figures, its emissions levels per capita were the seventh highest in the world. This seems to be a Gulf States problem – Qatar was second, Bahrain fifth, Kuwait sixth, Saudi Arabia ninth and Oman tenth.

Barakah nuclear power plant  
Solar is one solution; nuclear another. In 2020, the UAE began operations at Barakah, the Arab world’s first nuclear power plant, sited on Abu Dhabi’s Gulf Coast just east of Qatar. Qatar, however, opposed the scheme, claiming it could cause regional instability. Many have questioned the logic of committing to nuclear given the regional abundance and potential of solar.

Using technology devised by a South Korean consortium, the $20bn plant has four reactors and produces power via nuclear fission. The UAE wants Barakah to meet a quarter of its energy needs. According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was ‘closely consulted’ and the facility was built ‘with huge public support’. The plant is expected to produce 5.6 GW and three of its four reactors are now connected to the grid.

The debate about whether going nuclear is a good thing may well last some time. As for coal, almost everyone these days thinks that’s a bad idea, so it seems astonishing that just three years ago DEWA opened the 2,400 MW Hassyan coal-fired power plant, a project in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

One crucial aspect, from the UAE’s perspective, was to reduce dependence on gas imports from Qatar. But it wasn’t long before there was a re-think. In January 2022, DEWA revealed its decision to convert Hassyan from clean coal to natural gas. That’s one less awkward topic the hosts of COP28 will have to answer when its energy policies are scrutinised later this year.

But while the UAE may have retreated from coal, along with much of the Western world, several MENA countries continue to embrace it. True, the power stations being commissioned have pollution controls that trap sulphur dioxide, particulates, mercury and other toxic emissions, but they will still produce large quantities of CO₂, the main driver of global warming.

It’s fair to assume there will always be the risk of political and economic expediency watering down the green intentions of MENA governments and tugging them in other directions.