Looking for alternatives: Exploring sustainable ways of diversifying the energy mix

With strong industrial growth and demand for electricity on the rise, Ras Al Khaimah’s energy needs are expanding at such a rate that it requires the exploration of a number of alternatives to ensure production continues apace. Though the emirate has access to electricity and petrol at lower-than-market prices thanks to supply from its fellow emirate, Abu Dhabi, developing domestic production is a priority. However, even in spite of this, industrial growth and the desire to diversify energy sources have driven efforts to develop other options. In this context RAK’s varied endeavours at researching green energy technologies – a combination of sustainable sources and energy-efficiency techniques – hold promise to ease the burden on traditional sources. Though there are no current sources of renewable, sustainable or emissions-free energy available for mass consumption in RAK, the emirate is emerging as a centre for research and development. Projects are in progress that could soon position RAK as a leader in the research field.

Infrastructure Development

These include a series of experiments the government is helping to fund to develop solar energy solutions, upgrades to the emirate’s electricity infrastructure to better host renewable installations, and a plan for a zeroemissions electricity plant fuelled by coal. Development of electricity infrastructure is important because at the moment there is no grid for the emirate other than the one owned at the federal level by the Federal Electricity and Water Authority (FEWA). Establishing a grid for RAK would allow the government enough control to guarantee private investors a specific price for power they generate and feed into the grid, and an assurance that is typically required to generate private investment. Several organisations have emerged as catalysts for this drive. One group involved in that process is the local unit of the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology, CSEM-UAE. It is a non-profit joint venture between the Swiss parent company, CSEM, and the RAK government through the RAK Investment Authority (RAKIA).

Research & Development

CSEM has two roles in the emirate: the first is akin to the business model of its parent company in Switzerland: to serve as a research-and-development outlet to the private sector on a contract basis. Within RAK, CSEM can be hired by anyone undertaking a research project by paying only the labour costs, and has the option upon a project’s completion to purchase the resulting intellectual property. The company maintains laboratories and a staff of full-time engineers in project-manager roles, and will bring in relevant specialists on a project-to-project basis. Its other role is to undertake research projects on its own in the fields of renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean technology and water desalination.

The company came to the emirate in 2005, and its initial mandate was to support industrial growth in RAK. In 2009 this was extended to survey the emirate for potential in renewable energy. Weather monitoring and data analysis continues, but the group has determined thus far that solar energy is the most viable option, as RAK gets 300 sunny days a year. With cooling accounting for 60-70% of electricity usage in the emirate and demand peaking in the summer, when solar power generation potential is at its highest, the method is a natural fit.

Ideal Location

CSEM’s initial findings show that RAK is an ideal location for its research: if it can generate electricity through solar power on a small scale and make it cheaper in the UAE than using a dieselpowered generator, then the company believes it can sell that technology anywhere in the world. The reasoning behind this is that solar power is typically viewed as expensive, but making it cheaper than the generators on a global basis would increase its potential to be a viable technology. Given that diesel prices in the UAE among the lowest in the world, if those prices can be beaten by CSEM in the UAE, then that certainly bodes well for doing business in that it can clearly also do so in countries where diesel is more expensive.

Climate Considerations

RAK’s climate also gives it a distinct advantage for facilitating these experiments. The heat of the desert combined with the humidity that comes from being near the coast make the emirate one of the most hostile environments on earth for metal installations exposed to the elements. Adding to these climatic and geographic challenges, sand and dust blown over solar panels can also reduce their effectiveness as conductors of sunlight presenting further challenges to the use of such technology.

The presence of these conditions in RAK makes it one of the best places for testing and developing such technology, and it is believed that materials that can survive this climate are reasonably certain to prove durable in most other locations, which tend to have less extreme conditions. Given the fact that worldwide, deserts are considered to present significant potential in terms of solar energy, but are at the same time difficult environments for the life and effectiveness of equipment, CSEM anticipates that finding solutions to the challenges faced in these areas would be profitable.

Putting Solar To The Test 

At CSEM’s outdoor testing ground in Al Hamra, the largest pilot project is its solar island, which consists of rows of solar panels on a round and raised stage that rotates according to the position of the sun. It is called an island because the idea for a permanent installation is to put something like this on a floating platform off RAK’s coast and connect it either to the emirate’s electricity grid or directly to a small housing development to provide power. The focus is less on largescale solar projects that would feed into a national grid but on smaller-capacity projects that could power a housing development, for example, or a village.

For energy efficiency, CSEM is studying methods such as an exterior paint that reflects sunlight, preventing the outer walls of a temperature-controlled structure from heating up; low-power streetlights; heat-load reduction options, and others. It is also working on ways to use the heat developed as a byproduct of industrial activity in the emirate that is currently wasted, in addition to methods for improving the efficiency of water desalinisation methods.

Clean Coal

Utico, one of three suppliers of electricity in RAK currently, is planning an Dh1.5bn ($408.3m) 270-MW coal-fired power plant that will use a carbon-capture system to make it a facility that reduces pollutants almost completely, and is forecast to be operational by 2015.

The plan includes capturing carbon emissions and using them and other chemicals, along with algae, to make biofuels as a by-product. Utico’s plan utilises the technology of Shanghai Electric, and Richard Menezes, Utico’s managing director, said European and Japanese companies would also be involved in the development consortium. Utico has held discussions with RAK Metal and Minerals Investments, a RAKIA subsidiary, about securing coal supply from mines the government agency owns on the Indonesian section of the island of Borneo.

If successful, a facility of this type would be the first in the region and could help to prove that on a global scale coal can be used to make electricity without adding pollutants to the earth’s atmosphere at a cost that is not prohibitive. As of now, several different methods to produce clean-coal technology are in various stages of experimentation and development worldwide. One such trial involves capturing carbon and storing it, and then combusting coal in a sealed chamber instead of burning it and creating pollutants in the process.

“Power generation and consumption needs to go greener in RAK. The change needs to come first from the community, from the way that energy is consumed,” Menezes told OBG. “Once we become more efficient as a community, industry will adapt to provide more efficient means of generating power.”

Carbon Sequestration

To the north of RAK, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has been working since 2011 on a project for a clean-coal electricity that would use the carbon capture-and-storage method, which is also known as carbon sequestration – a process which involves isolating emissions before coal is burned and then pumping them into an underground reservoir.

One challenge with enacting the proposed carbon sequestration plan, however, is finding a reliable place to store the emitted carbon, so that it does not escape into the earth’s atmosphere. Potential regional storage sites currently being investigated by the DEWA include depleted oil and gas fields, existing underground coal seams that cannot be mined further, as well as underground saltwater formations that would not increase the acid level in oceans, as well as several other underground sites.