Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) continues to develop its infrastructure supported by assets exceeding AED200 billion owned by DEWA and its subsidiaries, and an additional investment of AED40bn over five years in the energy and water sectors.
This helps DEWA expand its production capacity to meet the growing demand for electricity and water, using the latest technologies, including drones, to provide its services.
The electricity and water company harnesses the drone technology as part of the Sirb initiative, which includes using advanced drones to support Dubai’s growing infrastructure.
DEWA has developed its use of drone technology by utilising upgradable technologies, such as high-definition cameras that are equipped with night-vision and laser technologies, GPS sensors that can measure pressure, height, magnetic fields and use ultrasound scanning. The company has several types of drones, such as multi-rotor hydro, fixed-wing, multi-rotor and underwater Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs).
In water desalination, ROVs are used for underwater inspection of the water intake infrastructure. Drones are also used for boiler inspection during annual overhauls, and also in videography and site inspections.
In 2021, the Generation Division completed over 90 flights using robots to support the delivery of water and electricity services.
DEWA ensures drinking water quality through round the clock monitoring. Samples of seawater entering the power and desalination plants are collected to ensure a sufficient level of free residual chlorine to maintain the disinfection process for protecting the equipment.
The company has also installed instruments for continuous monitoring of seawater parameters, such as pH, temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen. It maintains regular schedules to collect water samples at different stages of the desalination process to ensure drinking water quality and analyses the seawater inlet and brine discharge samples from the power generation and desalination process to study its physical, chemical and microbiological parameters to ensure compliance with UAE regulations.
DEWA currently has 43 Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) water desalination units, with a total production capacity of 427 million imperial gallons of desalinated water per day (MIGD) at the D-, E-, G-, K-, L, and M Stations. It also has 2 SWRO plants with a production capacity of 63 MIGD.
Its total production capacity of desalinated water is 490 MIGD at the Jebel Ali Power Plant and Desalination Complex and the company aims to increase its SWRO production capacity to 303 MIGD by 2030, reaching 42 percent, from its current share of 13 percent.
The desalinated water production capacity will reach 730 MIGD by 2030. The increased production capacity of decoupling water desalination from electricity generation will save nearly AED13bn by 2030 and reduce 44 million tonnes of carbon emissions.
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