UAE Smart Grid Industry

United Arab Emirates Smart Grid Market Analysis

The United Arab Emirates Smart Grid Market is expected to register a CAGR of greater than 2.5% during the forecast period.

• Factors like the ongoing investment in grid modernization, robust renewable energy growth, and the need to meet growing power demand are expected to drive the market of intelligent grid networks in the forecast period.
• On the other hand, the United Arab Emirates is developing a smart grid at a pace with which the growing renewable energy sector and the significant initial investment for the modification of the network are expected to restrain the market in the future slightly.
• Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) is actively contributing to transforming Dubai into the smartest city in the world. To support this objective, DEWA developed a comprehensive strategy to implement a smart water and electricity infrastructure. It is called a smart grid, which will provide advanced features and includes automated decision-making and interoperability across the entire electricity and water network.
• DEWA's Smart Grid Programme, with investments totaling AED 7 billion (USD 1.9 billion), is a key element in DEWA's strategy to develop an advanced infrastructure. It 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. This is a good market opportunity to drive the smart meter market significantly.

United Arab Emirates Smart Grid Market Trends

Advanced Metering Infrastructure to Witness a Significant Growth

• Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) or intelligent metering is a fundamental component of grid development, which is expected to witness considerable growth in the future and drive the smart grid market further. With the rise of electricity generation capacity, which stood at 139.4 TWh in 2021, an increase of 8% in the last five years, the steady growth will require smart grid solutions in UAE.
• As per DEWA Smart Grid Report 2022, the existing advanced metering infrastructure provides interval meter reading data. The data is transported over the communications network and exchanged, processed, and stored across DEWA's Enterprise Integration Architecture (EIA) and IT Infrastructure.
• DEWA installed advanced metering infrastructure through the latest technologies in Dubai. It includes end-to-end security, a head-end system, a meter data management system, and integration with DEWA's billing system. As of 2021, 1,058,895 intelligent electricity meters and 960,364 smart water meters were installed across Dubai.
• DEWA enables its customers to get access to their energy usage via automated metering reading. It helps customers to manage their electricity and water usage and preserve natural resources. DEWA also facilitated the opening and closing of customer accounts by utilizing on-demand meter readings.
• With increasing efforts to modernize the electricity grid and adopt advanced metering infrastructure, the AMI segment is expected to hold sigificant share in the United Arab Emirates smart grid market during the forecast period.

Supportive Government Initiatives and Renewable Energy to Drive the Market

• In 2022, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) announced to invest of USD 1.9 billion toward implementing its updated smart grid strategy for 2021-2035. The innovative grid program also envisages Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 and the Dubai Net Zero Emissions Strategy 2050 to give 100 percent of the energy production capacity from renewable energy sources by 2050.
• As a part of the smart grid strategy, DEWA replaced existing electricity and water meters with smart meters between 2015 and 2020 and automated its entire transmission network connected to the 400 kV and 132 kV substations.
• DEWA strengthened the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) in its smart grid through its virtual power plant (VPP). DEWA's VPP platform integrated a few DERs, such as a smart grid station with a solar inverter of 200kW, residential photovoltaic (PV) inverters of 9kW, and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations with 44kW.
• Dubai's Clean Energy Strategy 2050 aims to provide total power output from renewable energy in a phased manner. It envisages providing 100% clean power by 205,0, 25% by 2030, and 7% by 2020. The installed renewable energy capacity reached 2579MW in 2021, a 25% increase from the previous year. The generation capacity would increase due to ambitious clean energy targets.
• Therefore, with the clean targets and existing deployments of smart solutions, the United Arab Emirates is expected to witness considerable growth in the market studied.

United Arab Emirates Smart Grid Industry Overview

The United Arab Emirates smart grid market is partially consolidated. Major companies in the market include General Electric Company, Honeywell International Inc., Schneider Electric SE, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, and Korea Electric Power Corporation, among others.

United Arab Emirates Smart Grid Market Leaders

United Arab Emirates Smart Grid Market News

• August 2022: DEWA announced software to augment its electricity distribution network. The software is dedicated to the Smart Design of Electricity Distribution Networks (SDEDNs), which will merge databases and electric network designs (11kV) through developed solutions. This will help network engineers to design a more effective and effective network.
• August 2022: DEWA announced the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to predict malfunctions of smart meters. The "iService" of DEWA tracks meter tampering and fraud detection and offers real-time insights about the existing state of the network.