Ali’s air conditioning quietly cools his spacious Dubai apartment around the clock and all year round, even when he is away on holiday.
With outside temperatures soaring toward 50 degrees in summer, he likes to come home to his chilled oasis in this skyscraper city sprouting from the desert.
“When I go outside I feel that a gigantic hair dryer is blowing in my face,” the 36-year old marketing manager said.
“If I turn off the air-conditioning when I leave the house, I will spend even more energy to cool down the house when I’m back. So I leave it.”
Ali, whose name has been changed for privacy, is not unusual in this high-rise city that has rapidly transformed from a sleepy fishing village to an international financial center.
Many of Dubai’s estimated 2 million inhabitants leave their air-conditioning running 24/7, shrugging off tips from Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) for electricity and water conservation.
Dubai’s non-stop running air-conditioners help drive the emirate’s summer peak demand per person to more than three times that of Spain — where cooling demand from its 47 million citizens has also surged over the last decade in scorching summers on the Iberian Peninsula.
Such heavy consumption in well-to-do UAE cities like Dubai and federal capital Abu Dhabi mean the wealthy Arab state could see another summer of sporadic power blackouts in the northern emirates. It will also face a ballooning gas bill for the fuel used to generate 85 percent of its electricity with global gas prices having doubled from a year ago.
HIGH AMBITION
In Dubai, major landmarks such as an indoor ski slope — where snow made at minus 8 degrees Celsius blankets three football pitches worth of pistes — have helped drive power consumption and climate-warming carbon emissions skyward.
The Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, uses some 150 megawatts of power, equal to about a tenth of the output of the world’s biggest nuclear reactors in a region that relies almost entirely on fossil fuels.
At its base, one of the world’s largest malls houses an Olympic-sized ice rink that helps keep some 150,000 daily visitors cool in the searing heat, desert dust and humidity.
Dubai alone used nearly 34,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity, with 46 percent being used by the commercial sector and nearly 30 percent in housing. The number of electricity consumers in the UAE’s business and trading hub rose nearly 10 percent in one year to over 580,000 in 2010.
The natural desire to keep cool and entertained in the Gulf’s hostile climate has helped make the United Arab Emirates one of the world’s top five power consumers per capita while emissions of climate-warming carbon from Emiratis are more than twice those of U.S. citizens.
BLACKOUTS
Dubai’s power demand alone accounts for nearly half of the UAE’s supplies and its use of precious electricity could leave the northern emirates, which receive supplies after Dubai and Abu Dhabi, in the dark.
The demand is expected to be even higher this year with the holy month of Ramadan falling in August, prompting citizens who traditionally flock abroad in the summer to stay home.
Residents of northern emirates such as Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah are no strangers to blackouts. In 2009, residents had to rent hotel rooms or drive to relatives’ homes to escape the suffocating heat after power went off for many hours a day.
Authorities have promised a blackout-free summer 2011, for Dubai at least, despite industry officials expecting power demand to rise at least another 5 percent this year — and severely strain resources.
“I can assure you there will be no power shortage for the next five years,” Saeed Mohamed al-Tayer, the chief executive of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), said in late June.
But a series of mid-June power cuts in Khor Fakkan, which is based in the neighboring emirate of Sharjah and is home to a major container terminal, has raised fears of yet another UAE summer with long, hot hours to endure with no power.
“There’s not enough planning in the northern emirates on how they’ll get the power for their industrial development,” Robin Mills, a Dubai-based energy economist said.
“Then there’s the problem of gas shortage where, especially in the northern emirates, you have to burn oil instead of gas, which is much more expensive,” he added.
ENERGY SECURITY
Around 80 to 85 percent of the UAE’s power is generated from burning natural gas and the rest comes from oil — an option of last resort due to the higher cost of crude and the loss of lucrative crude exports.
The UAE’s gas reserves are plentiful but have not been developed fast enough to meet the soaring demand for power and industrial gas feeds.
In March, the UAE pledged $1.6 billion for infrastructure in less developed northern emirates, seen as more prone to unrest than Dubai, the business hub, or Abu Dhabi, the federal capital.
Peak electricity demand in the UAE is estimated to rise by more than 12 percent annually between 2010-2020, according to Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company (ADWEC). ADWEC officials, contacted by Reuters, were not immediately for available for comment.
In a bid to diversify its energy sources, the country plans to build four 1,400 megawatt nuclear reactors on the coast of Abu Dhabi, with the first expected to open in 2017.
Until then, in a region so dependant on cooling, efficient use of the scarce power supplies should be top of the agenda for the UAE, experts say.
“Up to 70 percent of your energy is going to cooling and air con units are running at full capacity,” Dustin Cherniawski, director of GreenWave Capital, which brings energy-saving technologies to the Middle East.
“But they have to be in excellent shape so you don’t waste any energy….”The majority of AC units we encounter would benefit from increased frequency and quality of maintenance..”
Sahara Solar Breeder Project Would Power World With Sand
Sand as the solution to the world’s energy woes? Or, more precisely, silica? The Sahara Solar Breeder Project is a plan by universities in Japan and Algeria to provide 50 percent of the world’s electricity by 2050.
How? By building manufacturing plants across the Sahara Desert that would extract silica from sand to make solar panels. The facilities would then be used to build solar power plants. And so on and so on, until the breeding strategy can deliver 100 gigawatts of electricity.
Is it a great big idea? Sure. Will it work? Time will tell.
The Sahara Solar Breeder Project would take advantage of all the silica and sunlight found in the North Africa desert. One snag: The technology for transforming desert sand into silicon and then solar cells doesn’t exist yet. Also just a concept: The supergrid that would connect the desert to the world, requiring liquid-nitrogen cooled cables buried deep underground.
Project leader Hideomi Koinuma calls the venture the Super Apollo Project, after the Greek god of light and sun, and the NASA mission that put a man on the moon.
The universities plan to spend about $2 million U.S. on the research over five years, in hopes that the technology will be embraced by developers and used to build the project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdO6T1TIDzQ&feature=player_embedded Will this Sahara project ever see the light of day? Is the Sahara desert the best place for manufacturing plants? Why not just export the panels to where they’re needed, rather than constructing a supergrid to carry the power?
In this case, we still have a long way to go toward weaning the world off of fossil-fueled electricity. Then again, research like this could change the game. Europe is already planning to tap into the Sahara for solar electricity with a Desertec project, as previously reported by TreeHugger’s Matthew McDermott.
A more advanced power grid taking shape across the emirate could cut peak electricity use by as much as 20 per cent, lowering carbon pollution and reducing the investment burden on the Abu Dhabi Government, a power official says.
Such a “smart grid” would have its foundation in the digital electricity meters being installed in every home, Mohammed Moazzem Hossain, the operations planning and studies department manager of the Abu Dhabi Distribution Company (ADDC), said yesterday.
But it would also require extensive changes to power prices and new infrastructure to meet the “technically possible” 20 per cent estimate, Mr Hossain said. The ADDC supplies electricity and water to the capital and surrounding areas. Power consumption across the emirate spikes far above average in the afternoons of the hottest summer days because of increased airconditioning use. Generators to cope with peak demand are used as rarely as a few hundred hours every year, but still cost the Government hundreds of millions of dirhams in maintenance.
A more advanced power grid featuring digital meters and pricing that changes depending on the time of day, however, would communicate directly with each household and offer financial incentives to shift power use to off-peak hours. Lower rates at night might encourage consumers to wait until the evening to switch on their washing machines, for example, or give factories incentives to keep energy-intensive production lines turned off during the hottest afternoons.
Studies in western countries had shown smart grids could reduce peak consumption by between 10 and 15 per cent without compromising consumers’ lifestyles, said Wajdi Ahmad, the technical solutions director of Middle East smart grids for the US company General Electric. “We’re not saying ‘turn off your AC’,” Mr Ahmad told a power conference yesterday hosted by Frost & Sullivan, the management consultancy.
“There are two ways to meet the [power] demand: supply side management and demand side management, and so far we have only taken the supply side.” But for such grids to take off in the region, utilities would need to introduce variable electricity pricing, Mr Ahmad emphasised. ADDC has been working all year to install digital electricity meters in every home and building to form the technological basis for such a grid. The company said in August that it expected to complete the installation campaign by the end of the year.
At first, the meters will simply offer customers and electricity providers more detailed data on the time of day that power consumption is highest, and identify sources of waste in the grid. But the meters could also form the technological backbone of a more advanced grid and allow consumers to sell surplus electricity back into the grid from rooftop solar panels. High-level policy changes that would pave the way for the second phase of grid development are under consideration by the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, a leading decision-making body.
Mohammad Ahmad al Bowardi, the council’s Secretary General, said last week it would come to a decision on proposals to change power pricing and create incentives for solar panels in “four to six weeks”.
Solar Cube: Drinking Water and Electricity Anywhere at Anytime.
The Spectra Solar Cube can purify and desalinate water from almost any source. Powered from the integrated photovoltaic solar panels and wind powered generator, Solar Cube solutions can provide both pure drinking water and electricity for small villages, resorts, or disaster relief.
Each system is sold complete and ready to deploy in a matter of hours. No building or infrastructure is required.
Each Spectra Solar Cube is built in Switzerland using the finest materials and craftsmanship – engineered for years of rugged service.
Solar Cube’s concept is unique in its format. It provides both water and electricity without the need for perpetual fuel or fuel transport costs. The modular format makes the systems easy to maintain as each module or subsystem can be removed from the cube for accessability and easy maintenance. Each Solar Cube system has a reliable Trunz Back-Filter™system, a proprietary automatic backwashing filter system, as well as a dependable water delivery pump, battery bank, inverter (to provide AC power), controls, wind generator, solar panels, and full water purification or water desalination system.
In Case of Emergency… A Spectra-Trunz Solar Cube could mean the difference between life and death.
Totally self contained, the Solar Cube operates from solar and/or wind power to provide a distributed water and energy infrastructure. Once deployed and in operation, no fuel or fuel delivery costs are incurred.
The Solar cube is ideal for providing critical pure drinking water and electrical power in disaster relief operations such the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.
Revolutionary PETE combines heat and light energy from the sun
The ever-generous sun might have a lot more of its energy harvested, if this technology that Stanford engineers have developed is realized by the world.
After a load of research and work, the researchers have dug out a way to use both, the sun’s heat as well as light at the same time. Using the two together can help generate a lot more electricity, almost doubling the production of solar power, efficiently and as cheap as using oil!
The process called photon enhanced thermionic emission, or simply PETE, requires a higher temperature than roof top solar panels do, and will work best in solar concentrators such as parabolic dishes which can heat up to a blistering 800°. The process is not based on standard photovoltaic mechanisms, but can give you a photovoltaic-like response at very high temperatures, and the higher the temperature, the better the performance.
Unlike photovoltaic systems that waste a lot of heat without using it for thermal energy generation, the PETE system does just that, which leads to a much higher energy generation, with thermal power and solar power combined.
The PETE could help change the future of energy generation for the better!
The UAE’s electricity shortage is doing more than making residents hot under the collar. It is also hampering the nation’s fledgling waste-recycling efforts.
Despite having plenty of sanitised drinking water on tap, thanks to the desalination plants that dot the Gulf coast, residents of the Emirates are the world’s biggest per capita consumers of bottled water.
Perhaps that is because in summer, water emerges from “cold” taps at temperatures more suited to bathing than drinking. Alternatively, many residents may distrust the quality and condition of water tanks and pipes in their too frequently jerry-built accommodation.
Be that as it may, the UAE’s bottled water habit translates into a massive problem with plastic waste causing unsightly litter and clogging landfill sites. Hoping to capitalise on the problem while helping clean up the environment, a local firm, Horizon Technologies, two years ago built a state-of-the art recycling plant in Fujairah to process the offending used water bottles and other discarded plastic packaging into clean plastic flakes and chips.
It exports food-grade plastic chips and non-food-grade flakes to clients in South Asia, the Far East, Europe and the US. Many local residents, including most western expatriates, support the idea of waste recycling and have long complained about the lack of opportunities to participate in home-grown recycling initiatives.
It is therefore not surprising that Horizon’s revenues more than quadrupled last year to Dh12.4 million (US$3.4m) from Dh2.8m in 2008. Despite this, the plant is operating at only a third of its 2,000 tonnes per month capacity. The reason: It is short of power.
“This is a major issue for us. Since the company was established we have had to use generators for electricity,” Rajnish Sinha, the general manager of Horizon told MEED in a recent interview. “We are still operating from generators and need a connection with Federal Electricity and Water Authority (FEWA).”"I don’t know what the problems are, but it is draining our resources,” he added.
“This issue needs government support.” As of January, 2008, however, FEWA, which has only about 1,120 megawatts of power generation capacity from aging and inefficient plants, is only responsible for supplying electricity and water to residential customers in the UAE’s northern emirates.
The individual emirates are responsible for supplying commercial and industrial users as well as big real estate projects. But the governments of Fujairah, Ras al Khaimah and Ajman were given this responsibility before they had time to set up their own power plants and secure fuel allocations for them. As a result, many recent developments have been waiting for grid connections for more than a year.
The Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company is building a 2,000mw power plant in Fujairah which is due for completion by the end of this year. Fujairah businesses are hoping this will solve their chronic electricity problems. Horizon, however, will continue to face other obstacles, including regulations preventing it from importing materials for recycling.
“Although we can export products, we are not allowed to import raw materials for recycling, so we are totally dependent on local materials,” Mr Sinha said. This is ironic, as Horizon biggest shareholder is National Mineral Water, or Tanuf, based in neighbouring Oman. Tanuf, a bottled water distributor, has set up recycling bins in Oman and hoped to be among Horizon’s chief suppliers.
All that is needed for the scheme to work is a bilateral agreement between the two GCC neighbours on bottle recycling. In the meantime, Horizon is just scraping by on “very tight” margins. Most of its input comes from Dubai, but the quality varies.
It has no immediate plans to build another plant. Little wonder, then, that only 8-9 per cent of the UAE population recycles, compared with an average of 21-22 per cent worldwide. To add insult to injury, some of the biggest power consumers are the energy-intensive desalination plants that supply the potable tap-water that most UAE residents spurn.
The National
SEWA blames it on huge demand, breakdowns
An official at the Control Section of the Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (SEWA) said the power outages were due to increased demand, straining the capacity of the generation plants which, in turn, causes breakdowns and diesel shortage.
The increasing demand and consumption during hot days take a toll on the plants.
“Power conservation by the consumers would help reduce the heavy load. Otherwise, the huge demand would cause shortage of diesel and breakdowns in the main plants generating power,” the official, who requested anonymity, said.
“The authority recently augmented the capacity of power transmission from 220KW to 400KW to meet the demand,” the official, who requested anonymity, said. “There are technical failures in the main plants which will be solved soon.
“SEWA has a 24-hour emergency team on stand by at the control section to respond quickly to complaints.”
The authority set up 132 power transformers in the industrial areas, Al Majaz and Al Nahda recently.
“The Control Section is monitoring the situation in Alliah and Wasit plants and directing the team to restore power generation to the full capacity.
“We understand the suffering of families. We are working hard to resolve the issue and provide power to all residents,” he said.
On complaints that officials are not answering residents who call the hotline number, he said thousands of calls come at any point of time. “Responding to them all is very difficult. The consumers need to keep trying until they get a response.”
EU sees solar power imported from Sahara in five years
The European Union is backing projects to turn the plentiful sunlight in the Sahara desert into electricity for power-hungry Europe, a scheme it hopes will help meet its target of deriving 20% of its energy from renewable sources in 2020.
“I think some models starting in the next five years will bring some hundreds of megawatts to the European market,” Oettinger told Reuters after a meeting with energy ministers from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.
He said those initial volumes would come from small pilot projects, but the amount of electricity would go up into the thousands of megawatts as projects including the €400 billion Desertec solar scheme come on stream.
“Desertec as a whole is a vision for the next 20 to 40 years with investment of hundreds of billions of euros,” said Oettinger. “To integrate a bigger percentage of renewables, solar and wind, needs time.”
The EU is backing the construction of new electricity cables, known as interconnectors, under the Mediterranean Sea to carry this renewable energy from North Africa to Europe.
Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.
“This is a good question but not a question to destroy our project,” Oettinger said. “This question must be answered by a good answer and so we need ways to ensure that our import of electricity is from renewables.”
He said he believed it was technologically possible to monitor electricity imports to the EU and establish if they come from renewable sources or fossil fuels. “This question must be solved in the next years,” he said.
Solar subsidies
The Desertec consortium includes major firms such as Siemens, RWE and Deutsche Bank. They are expected to seek public money for the project.
Oettinger said the EU’s assistance was likely to include help coordinating stakeholders, updating regulations to allow the imported electricity to move across European borders, and financing feasibility studies.
On the prospect of EU subsidies, or the European Commission permitting state aid to firms involved in the project, he said that would become clear once the consortium has presented a detailed business plan.
Oettinger said all three energy ministers at the meeting in the Algerian capital sent a signal they were willing to build the infrastructure and common market rules needed to allow a trade in renewable electricity with Europe.
He countered concerns expressed in the past by some officials in Algeria that the project could involve Europeans exploiting north Africa’s natural resources.
“Renewables are a two-way partnership because electricity produced here is for the home market of north African countries,” he said.
“Maybe a bigger percentage of the electricity will be exported to Europe but at the same time we have to export the technology, tools, machines, experts, and so it’s a real partnership, not only a partnership by selling and by buying.”
Taking advantage of astounding Arab apathy, African countries of the Nile Basin met in the absence of Egypt and Sudan to agree on a plan for sharing the Nile water. Ethiopia, which is the source of 85 percent of the Blue Nile, is only able to utilize a small portion of this water as it crosses its low-laying areas while the bulk of its agricultural activities are on highlands, blessed with abundance of water. Nevertheless, it is demanding the right to construct dams on the Nile for the generation of electricity, to be in turn exported to Europe. What is precarious is the notion of asking for a “fair share” from Nile water with the rights of selling it to other countries. This move was instigated by Israel’s offer to buy water from the source countries. Whereas the construction of the hydroelectric dams does not impact the quantity of water flowing to Sudan and Egypt in real terms, offering the Nile water on the market for sale as a commercial commodity would result in an indisputable disaster.
The Nile crosses 10 countries before its downstream reaches the Nile Delta estuary on the Mediterranean. The White Nile originates from Lake Victoria between Kenya and Uganda while the Blue Nile originates from Ethiopia. The two rivers meet in Sudan to merge in one large stream to Egypt. Around 90 percent of Nile water currently reaches Sudan and Egypt, which both have been given the right to veto any projects for the construction of dams or alteration of water use in upstream areas, through an agreement that was signed in 1929. The countries that have met in Uganda have decided to establish a new joint authority for the management of the Nile, based on new guidelines.
On another front, both Iraq and Syria are subject to a drastic water deficit, due to sharp reductions in the flow from Turkey, where the Tigris and Euphrates originate. In Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, water scarcity has reached dangerous levels, after Israel strengthened its grip on the Jordan River waters and stole a major portion of groundwater resources. Lebanon is losing its water due to mismanagement, pollution or simply wasting it in the sea.
We do not have to wait for the implications of the Uganda agreements nor the impacts of climate change as Arabs are already in the heart of the water catastrophe. Official figures have until recently estimated the per-capita share of water in Egypt to be 750-cubic meters per year in 2010, based on the assumption that the Nile flow is 55 billion-cubic meters. The amount of water actually reaching Egypt today does not exceed 44-billion cubic meters, reducing per-capita share to no more than 600-cubic meters annually, 20 per cent lower than the official figure.
The most recent water reports indicate that three Arab countries are the poorest in water availability in the world amongst 180 countries. In the list of the 19 water-poorest, there are 13 Arab countries. In four Arab countries the per-capita share is below 100-cubic meters – Kuwait, UAE, Qatar and Palestine – while in four other countries the figure is below 200-cubic meters – Libya, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Jordan. There are five Arab countries with per-capita share less than 500-cubic meters – Yemen, Djibouti, Oman, Algeria and Tunisia – while Egypt, Lebanon and Syria are on the boundary of water scarcity with less than 1,000-cubic meters per capita. The only two Arab countries that still pass the water stress line are Iraq and Sudan, at more than 1,000-cubic meters per capita.
In the annual report published by the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) in 2008, we predicted, based on figures available then, that 2025 will be the ominous date when the average per-capita share in the Arab region will drop below 500-cubic meters annually, which is termed as severe water scarcity. The figures we are handling now and the conclusions reached so far by researchers working on the latest report to be published by AFED in November 2010, clearly indicate that we are in the heart of a water catastrophe and we will not have to wait for 2025 or the implications of the Uganda meeting about sharing the Nile.
Why is it considered that any allocation that is below 1,000-cubic meters per capita is water scarcity, while below 500-cubic meters is severe scarcity? Let us take notice that a cup of coffee of 200 milliliters requires 140 liters of water to produce the spoon of coffee to make it. One apple requires 70 liters while 1 kilogram of wheat needs 1,300 liters. One kilogram of beef requires 15,000 liters, and a pair of jeans will exploit 11,000 liters of water to irrigate the cotton to make it.
Arabs cannot afford to lose a single drop of water. Governments should immediately implement sustainable water management policies, adopt water efficiency measures, shift from irrigation by flooding to drip irrigation, develop crops resilient to salinity and requiring less water, recycle and reuse wastewater, and develop affordable technologies for sea water desalination.
Any delay in a serious response to the water challenge corresponds to mass suicide. The water apocalypse is knocking on Arab doors, right now.
Najib Saab, dailystar.com.lb
Saab is secretary general of AFED and is the editor in chief of Al-Bia Wal-Tanmia. Saab is a regular contributor to The Daily Star.
Energy Saving A/C Conquers All Climates
NREL senior engineer Eric Kozubal examines a prototype air flow channel of the DEVap air conditioner, which he co-invented. DEVap, which stands for desiccant-enhanced evaporative air conditioner, is a novel concept that uses membrane technology to combine the efficiency of evaporative cooling and the drying potential of liquid desiccant salt solutions. The graph superimposed on the photo shows shows how hot humid air, in red, changes to cool dry air, in blue, as the air passes through the DEVap core. Credit: Pat Corkery
Ah, the cool, refreshing feel of air conditioning on a sweltering summer day.
Ugh, the discomfort when those energy bills in July, August and September come due — $200, $400, $600 or more.
Feel miserable, or dig deep into your wallet — not much of a choice for the 250 million Americans who live in climates where heat, humidity or both are a Catch-22 for three to 12 months a year.
A soothing solution may be on its way, thanks to a melding of technologies in filters, coolers and drying agents.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has invented a new air conditioning process with the potential of using 50 percent to 90 percent less energy than today’s top-of-the-line units. It uses membranes, evaporative cooling and liquid desiccants in a way that has never been done before in the centuries-old science of removing heat from the air.
“The idea is to revolutionize cooling, while removing millions of metric tons of carbon from the air,” NREL mechanical engineer Eric Kozubal, co-inventor of the Desiccant-Enhanced eVaporative air conditioner (DEVap), said.
“We’d been working with membranes, evaporative coolers and desiccants. We saw an opportunity to combine them into a single device for a product with unique capabilities.”
Evaporative coolers are a lower-cost alternative to A/C in dry climates that don’t get too hot or humid — say, Denver, but not Phoenix or Miami. Water flows over a mesh, and a fan blows air through the wet mesh to create humid, cool air.
These graphs show the savings possible with DEVap in a warm, dry climate such as Phoenix, if natural gas is the source of energy.
In humid climes, adding water to the air creates a hot and sticky building environment. Furthermore, the air cannot absorb enough water to become cold.
In Phoenix or Tucson, the evaporative cooler can bring down the temperature, but not enough to make it pleasant inside on a 100-degree day or during the four to eight week moist period known as monsoon season. The cooling bumps up against the wet bulb temperature, the lowest temperature to which air can be cooled by evaporating without changing the pressure. The wet bulb temperature could be 75 or 80 degrees on a mid-summer Tucson day. Typically, evaporative coolers only can bring the temperatures about 85 percent of the way to the wet bulb level.
So, for most of the country, refrigeration-based air conditioning is the preferred way of keeping cool.
Cooling comes in two forms — sensible cooling, which is a temperature drop, and latent cooling, which comes from pulling the moisture out of the air.
One intriguing product already on the market in arid, temperate climates is the Coolerado cooler. It differs from a typical evaporative cooler by never increasing the moisture content of the supply air. It provides cool air through indirect evaporative cooling. Indirect evaporative systems use a purge air stream that removes heat from the product or supply air stream that is then directed into a building.
That way, the Coolerado can cool the air all the way to the wet-bulb temperature.
“It’s a big improvement on evaporative cooling because it doesn’t add moisture and still gives you cold air,” Kozubal said. However, in a humid climate, it still does not provide cold air or humidity control.
The DEVap solves that problem. It relies on the desiccants’ capacity to create dry air using heat and evaporative coolers’ capacity to take dry air and make cold air.
“By no means is the concept novel, the idea of combining the two,” Kozubal said. “But no one has been able to come up with a practical and cost-effective way to do it.”
HVAC engineers have known for decades the value of desiccants to air conditioning. In fact, one of the pioneers of early A/C, Willis Haviland Carrier, knew of its potential, but opted to go the refrigeration route.
Most people know of desiccants as the pebble-sized handfuls that come with new shoes to keep them dry.
The kind NREL uses are syrupy liquids — highly concentrated aqueous salt solutions of lithium chloride or calcium chloride. They have a high affinity for water vapor, and can thus create very dry air.
Because of the complexity of desiccant cooling systems, they have traditionally only been used in industrial drying processes. Inventing a device simple enough for easy installation and maintenance is what has impaired desiccant cooling from entering into commercial and residential cooling markets.
To solve that problem, the NREL device uses thin membranes that simplify the process of integrating air flow, desiccants, and evaporative cooling. These result in an air conditioning system that provides superior comfort and humidity control.
The membranes in the DEVap A/C are hydrophobic, which means water tends to bead up rather than soak through the membranes. Imagine rain falling on a freshly waxed car. That property allows the membranes to control the liquid flows within the cooling core. “It’s that property that keeps the water and the desiccant separated from the air stream,” Kozubal said.
“We bring the water and liquid desiccant into DEVap’s heat-mass exchanger core,” Kozubal said. “The desiccant and evaporative cooling effect work together to create cold-dry air.”
The air is cooled and dried from a hot-humid condition to a cold and dry condition all in one step. This all happens in a fraction of a second as air flows through the DEVap air conditioner. The result is an air conditioner that controls both thermal and humidity loads.
DEVap helps the environment in many ways. DEVap uses 50 percent to 90 percent less energy than top-of-the-line refrigeration-based air conditioning.
Because DEVap uses salt solutions rather than refrigerants, there are no harmful chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) or hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) to worry about. A pound of CFC or HCFC in refrigerant-based A/Cs contributes as much to global warming as 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. A typical residential size A/C has as much as 13 pounds of these refrigerants. The release of this much refrigerant is equivalent to burning more than 1,300 gallons of gasoline, or driving over 60,000 miles in a 2010 Toyota Prius. That’s based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s fuel efficiency rating for the 2010 Toyota Prius and on the standard of 19.5 pounds of carbon dioxide for every gallon of gasoline burned.
Traditional air conditioners use a lot of electricity to run the refrigeration cycle, but DEVap replaces that refrigeration cycle with an absorption cycle that is thermally activated. It can be powered by natural gas or solar energy and uses very little electricity.
This means that DEVap could become the most energy efficient way to cool your house whether you live in Phoenix, New York, or Houston.
NREL has patented the DEVap concept, and Kozubal expects that over the next couple of years he will be working on making the device smaller and simpler and perfecting the heat transfer to make DEVap more cost effective.
Eventually, NREL will license the technology to industry, “We’re never going to be in the air conditioner manufacturing business”, said Ron Judkoff, Principle Program Manager for Building Energy Research at NREL. “But we’d like to work with manufacturers to bring DEVap to market and create a more efficient and environmentally benign air conditioning product.”
Can coal contribute to lower carbon emissions?
As temperatures soar in the Middle East, sending much of the populace scurrying to air-conditioned sanctuaries, a Gulf state is again flirting with coal to solve its power problems.
That state is Dubai, which recently dispatched a high-level delegation to China to study coal-fired thermal power plants.
That might seem to fly in the face of Government efforts to green up the international image of the UAE and its most prominent emirates, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. But the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), whose chairman, Saeed al Tayer, headed the delegation, is billing the mission as an investigation into “the latest global practices in the area os sustainable energy”.
“Our visit comes in line with Dubai’s strategy to diversify the sources of energy and to meet the growing future needs through the use of a variety of sources to generate electricity and water focusing on the highest international standards in environmental preservation and safety,” Mr al Tayer, who is also the vice chairman of the emirate’s Supreme Energy Council, said in a statement on Thursday.
But how could burning coal, which is essentially carbon plus toxic impurities, possibly help the environment?
Dubai, which is short of natural gas for electricity generation and burns lots of expensive imported diesel in its power plants, is desperately hoping China has the answer. On paper at least, a reduction in the emirate’s carbon emissions is possible if DEWA adopts the latest technology for ultra-efficient coal-fired plants to push out diesel-fired power generation.
The latest generation of “ultra super critical” coal-fired plants do not burn coal as such. Instead, the solid fuel is first converted into a flammable mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide known as synthetic gas or “syngas” in a chemical reaction with steam.
In essence, this reduces the proportion of the coal plant’s output that comes from burning carbon relative to hydrogen from 100 per cent to something much lower. Under the right conditions, burning coal can thus produce a smaller amount of carbon emissions than burning a thermally equivalent amount of diesel, and can even approach the lower emissions of gas-fired plants.
In addition, the new coal plants are super efficient, due to design improvements that reduce energy wastage from processes such as water cooling.
The Dubai delegation visited a modern Chinese plant launched in 2008 that operates with an efficiency comparable to the best available “combined cycle” power plants running on natural gas.
This seems to have given Mr al Tayer and his entourage confidence.
“The use of coal technology in the production of electricity and water desalination is considered one of the long-term initiatives and strategy of the emirate of Dubai as part of alternatives to the energy mix using the best universally adopted techniques,” DEWA said in its press release on Thursday.
That preceded by two days the launch of a new gas exploration joint venture in the neighbouring emirate of Sharjah. The main rationale for that was to boost the supply of gas for power generation in Sharjah, which has suffered a series of severe power cuts this year and last during the sweltering summer months.
These initiatives are the latest indication that highly publicised projects to develop solar power in the UAE will not free the country from its current dependence on thermal power plants that burn fossil fuels.
As the country ramps up its nuclear programme over the next decade or so, gas and even coal will be the indispensable bridge fuels in the region’s slow transition to a lower carbon economy.
The National
Jordan and Sudan launch solar projects
Sudanese solar projects could provide children such as these, in Darfur, with access to electricity. Pic courtesy of the US government
Jordan and Sudan have launched solar projects, drawing them into the growing club of developing countries in the Middle Eastern and African sun belts seeking to harvest one of their most bountiful natural resources.
In terms of their energy needs, however, the two nations offer a study in contrasts.
Jordan, a small, land-locked desert kingdom with insignificant fossil fuel reserves, currently relies on oil and gas imports to supply almost all its transportation and power generation requirements. Its main challenge is to expand its electricity supply while reducing dependence on fuel imports. Solar power and nuclear development part of the proposed solution.
Sudan, on the other hand, is Africa’s largest country and the third biggest oil exporter in sub-Saharan Africa. But its oil and gas resources are not uniformly distributed throughout an impoverished country that is deeply fractured by political discord, which all too often erupts into civil war.
One of Sudan’s biggest needs is to ensure that all parts of the country have access to electricity, regardless of their proximity to oil and gas resources.
In Jordan, a partnership between a domestic company, Kawar Energy, and Italy’s Solar Ventures, has announced plans to develop 100 megawatts of solar power capacity by 2012, which could later be expanded to more than 200mw.
Construction of the US$400 million (Dh1.47 billion) Shams Maan project is slated to begin next year.
Before that, Jordan’s National Energy Research Centre will conduct a detailed study of the project site. The development consortium is evaluating available photovoltaic technologies in order to pick the one most appropriate for the region.
Jordan’s national energy strategy calls for the installation of 600mw of solar-power capacity and a 1,000 mw wind farm by 2020. The country is also aiming to develop a nuclear plant by 2015.
In Sudan, the former Darfur rebel leader Minni Minnawi and France’s Solar Euromed have signed a contract for the construction of three solar plants in the Darfur region of western Sudan, representing the first stage of a €1.25 billion agreement with Khartoum to build solar plants across the country.
The broader agreement calls for the development, and construction and operation of an ambitious 20,000mw of solar power capacity in Sudan over the next decade.
The Darfur plants, with a combined generating capacity of 250mw, are expected to start producing electricity in 2013-14.
“The solar programme in Sudan may well become a new world-class model by integrating renewable energy resources in the surrounding land while producing dispatchable elecricity and water,” the Sudanese secretary of energy and mining Omar Mohammed Kheir said in March.
It is to be hoped that the solar plants and an electricity grid to connect them will also help provide a foundation for lasting peace in the country.
In their different ways, the Jordanian and Sudanese national programmes to develop low-carbon energy are among the most aggressive in the region, and it would be surprising if they progressed without hitches. They may still develop faster than the generally smaller renewable energy programmes of far richer Gulf oil exporting states. That is because in both Jordan and Sudan, energy development is a pressing, basic human need.
The National
Algeria’s Cevital plans $8bln solar energy project
Algeria’s largest private company Cevital is seeking foreign investors to help it build an $8 billion solar power complex to export electricity to Europe, the company’s renewable energy chief said.
International investors want to use plentiful sunlight in north Africa to power energy-hungry Europe, but while projects are moving ahead in neighbouring Morocco, Algeria’s government has held back, saying it favours homegrown projects instead.
“We are working on a project of 2,000 Megawatts. This will cost an estimated $8 billion,” Boukhalfa Yaici, Cevital’s Renewable Energies Project Manager, told Reuters.
The electricity the project would generate is about the same as a mid-sized nuclear power station in the United States.
“What will determine the speed is the contribution of European Union (companies) to developing this energy project,” he said in an interview.
“Our partners can contribute through the construction of undersea lines, for example, from Algeria to Italy and Spain. All options are on the table.”
Major firms including Simens, RWE and Deutsche Bank have formed the Desertec consortium, a 400 billion euro plan to use solar power from the Sahara desert to supply 15 percent of Europe’s power by 2050.
HOMEGROWN SOLAR POWER
Cevital is a member of the consortium but Algeria’s government — which is tightening rules on foreign investment — has said it does not want foreigners exploiting its solar energy and is only interested if local firms play a central role.
Yaici said Cevital’s solar project will fit in the with the government’s policy of favouring Algerian firms and promoting exports outside the dominant oil and gas sector.
“It would be good to find a viable alternative solution to make possible this kind of exports. Cevital aims to be the biggest exporter of non-hydrocarbon products,” Yaici said.
Family-owned Cevital has interests ranging from sugar refining, to car imports, vegetable oil and margarine, and running hypermarkets.
The Cevital executive did not say how the company’s solar power project would fit in with the Desertec plan but he said his firm still backed it.
Countering allegations Desertec would exploit developing countries, he said the project would supply a large portion of North Africa’s energy needs and also help develop local renewable energy industries.
“Many components can be made locally. We want to be an industrial partner for this project,” he said. “The (Desertec) project is feasible and profitable for both exporters and importers. Financial problems will not arise.”
Reuters
Saudi Arabia hopes for renewables regulations in 2011
Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia hopes to approve a regulatory framework for investment in renewable energy in 2011, a top government official said on Wednesday.
The framework should set out the conditions of government funding and incentives for the sector, said Adullah al Shehri, governor of the Saudi Electricity and Cogeneration Authority (ECRA). Without them, the renewables sector would not progress in the kingdom, he said.
Shehri said: “We developed the policy and we were ready as regulators to submit to our board for approval and then take it to the council of ministers.”
GCC to invest $250bn in energy projects
DOHA: The GCC countries are expanding in electricity generating capacity and are expected to invest some $200bn to $250bn in between 14 and 20 energy projects by 2020, according to Professor Waheeb Essa Alnaser, President-Arab Section of the International Solar Energy Society.
He said the GCC governments are overhauling the way they manage hydrocarbon with most planning to reserve a greater portion of crude oil to produce value-added and refined products for exports and to use natural gas to fuel power plants.
“Investments in renewable energy fuel is on the rise. The region faces serious water shortage and there are a lot of good ideas to use solar energy for water desalination,” he said.
He also spoke of the advantages of the cleaner wind power stations, solar thermal power stations, hydro power with its low cost operation and geothermal power station in his presentation on the available renewable energy potential in the GCC.
Professor Alnaser was speaking at the Qatar Alternative Investors Summit (QAEIS) which off here yesterday. The two-day summit is a platform for governments and businesses to work together to make energy efficiency a priority.Hosted by business information group Naseba, QAEIS is dedicated to instigating capital flow as well as research and development opportunities in the alternative energy sector and aims to familiarize leading investors and businesses with Middle East’s vision for alternative energy.
Later speaking to reporters, Dr Khalid Ahmed Burashid (pictured), Deputy Chief Executive of Planning and Projects, Electricity and Water Authority, said there is a need to conduct pilot studies on site on the use of hybrid solar-wind type of energy generation.
The Gulf region is rich in solar energy, however wind has lot of advantages in terms of installed capacity, thus it has a lot of pros compared to solar energy. “Technology on wind energy is advancing, but we need to have a pilot hybrid solar-wind power plant,” he said.
“In order to reach a firm generation of energy capacity you have to have the hybrid model, because solar energy would not provide all the full capacity when is required. All this is subject to the outcome of the pilot plants that we intend to set up in Bahrain which will be up and running within the next two years,” he said.
Nasser Al Hathy, The Peninsula.
Gulf Arabs look to governments for energy fix
A consensus is developing that using less energy by using it more efficiently may be the least painful way to reduce carbon emissions – everywhere, that is, except the Gulf. A new survey released this week by Accenture, the global management consulting firm, has found that two-thirds of Arabic-speaking consumers in Gulf states have little interest in using less energy. That is despite the desire expressed by 90 per cent of the survey participants for their respective countries to reduce reliance on oil and gas-fired power generation. Instead, nine out of ten consumers want more government intervention to combat energy challenges, according to the survey, which was conducted in Arabic and covered Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oman and Kuwait. “We cannot address climate change unless we both create new sources of clean energy and reduce consumer demand,” said Oman Boulos, the managing director of Accenture, Middle East. “But our survey shows that consumers do not think lower energy use is a priority.” “It will take many years before renewable alternatives come fully on stream. Until they do, governments and energy companies will have to find creative ways to transform consumer habits and improve energy efficiency,” he said.
The survey of GCC consumers, which was part of Accenture’s broader New Energy World survey, also identified “reducing carbon emissions” as the primary reason respondents picked for reducing fossil fuel reliance. However, twice as many respondents picked “developing low carbon sources of energy” over “using less energy” as the priority solution.
They also overwhelmingly rejected the suggestion that consumers should be required to pay more for energy in order to curb consumption.
Consumers in the GCC were more likely than in other parts of the world to trust energy companies to address energy challenges, but 60 per cent of respondents said they would only do so if there was direction from government.
Two thirds of survey participants from Gulf states said more government intervention was “certainly” required in the energy market, compared with 45 per cent globally, while 90 per cent of GCC respondents thought there should “probably” or “certainly” be more government intervention.
Two thirds of the Gulf respondents also thought that nuclear power would be needed to reduce the region’s carbon emissions, indicating significantly higher support for nuclear development than in the West.
On average, GCC respondents estimated that renewable power already accounted for 11 per cent of power generation in the Gulf region, and thought this should be increased to 28 per cent.
In fact, renewable power accounts for a negligible proportion of the region’s electricity supply.
The Abu Dhabi Government has contemplated setting a target of 7 per cent for power generation from renewable energy sources, but has yet to announce this as part of a promised energy master plan for the emirate.
Tamsin Carlisle, The Grid/The National
From waterwheels to wind farms: Syrian energy renewal
Syria has a long history of renewable energy development. It started in the 5th century, with giant wooden water wheels used for irrigation.
Now the Syrian private investment group CHAM Holding and the Danish wind energy company Vestas have joined forces to develop Syria’s first wind farm.
The development covering two sites south of Damascus would have generating capacity of 50 to 100 megawatts, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.
SANA also reported today that Syria was planning investment in both solar and wind energy to help meet increasing power demand in the country due to population growth and industrial and agricultural expansion.
As in ancient times, energy demand from the agricultural sector is mostly for irrigation.
Wind development could represent a more attainable way for the Syria government to meet its renewable energy objectives, however, than its previous focus on solar energy, which is more expensive.
“Syria has a considerable wind energy potential in a variety of locations,” noted Mahmoud al Khosman, the Marafeq chief executive.
Marafeq, a unit of CHAM, would develop the initial wind project, Vestas would provide technology, and Kuwaiti contractor Al Kharafi would be responsible for engineering, procurement and construction, SANA said.
The development would mark CHAM’s debut in renewable energy investment. The group is currently involved in a thermal power project in Syria. It has previously undertaken “specialised” projects in the country’s oil and gas producing sector, according to information on its web site.
Syria was also assessing the feasibility of producing biodiesel from used cooking oil, SANA said today in remarks attributed to Wael Khansa, the head of the country’s Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technology.
In another development reported by the news agency, the institute was developing a regional sunlight map in co-operation with Armenia, with a view to investing in solar-powered water-heating and cooling projects.
These may be baby steps towards exploiting Syria’s renewable energy potential, but at least they are realistic for an underdeveloped Middle Eastern country without the huge investment resources of the Arab Gulf oil-producing states. It is encouraging that private-sector investors are getting involved at such an early stage.
Last week, SANA said Syria was planning to invest in solar-equipment manufacturing.
Masdar’s first carbon capture in Abu Dhabi in 2012
ABU DHABI- Abu Dhabi state-owned Masdar said on Tuesday its first carbon capture and storage (CCS) project would be cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the United Arab Emirates by the end of 2012.
The UAE is one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gas per capita. Abu Dhabi has pumped billions into clean energy initiative Masdar as it looks to both cut emissions and prepare the world’s third-largest crude exporter for a future less dependent on supply of oil.
The first CCS project would capture emissions from a new UAE steel plant, said Sam Nader, director of Masdar’s carbon management unit told reporters.
“The first capture is 800,000 tonnes from the Emirates Steel plant in 2012,” Nader said. “A contract will be awarded this year for the first capture.”
By 2014, Masdar would have captured a total of five million tonnes of CO2, he added.
Masdar aims to set up a network of pipelines in the UAE to pump carbon from emitting sites to oilfields, where it would be injected into reservoirs to maintain pressure and increase oil recovery. The network should be completed by 2015, he said.
The first phase of the plan is to capture CO2 from industrial units such as the Emirates Steel plant and from power plants.
Masdar is working closely with state-run Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO) to transport and inject CO2 into its oil reservoirs. ADCO runs the onshore crude fields for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
Other emitters that Masdar is targeting for carbon capture are the Emirates Aluminium plant, a gas-fired power station run by the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority and also a planned hydrogen power plant it is building with BP.
Carbon captured would back carbon credits sold under the UN’s clean development mechanism, which allows developing countries to sell emissions reductions from energy intensive industry to help rich countries offset their own contribution to climate change.
The UAE embarked on a CO2 emission reduction programme in 2007. Abu Dhabi aims to slash the emirate’s CO2 output by about one-third by 2020 and in doing so to free up more oil for exports.
Stanley Carvalho, Simon Webb and Keiron Henderson, uk.Reuters.com.
A consensus is developing that using less energy by using it more
Syria has a long history of renewable energy development. It started in the
ABU DHABI- Abu Dhabi state-owned Masdar said on Tuesday its first carbon capture and 