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29 March 2024

Why is your Dewa bill so high? Dubai's 'smart' meters now help you find out

Published
By Parag Deulgaonkar

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) has installed 80,000 to 90,000 smart meters to date, a senior government official told Emirates24|7.

“We have installed 80,000 to 90,000 smart meters. The installation work is being carried out in phases and we will cover the entire emirate in couple of years,” Dr Yousef Ebrahim Al Akraf, Executive Vice-President – Business Support & Human Resources, said.

He added that with the smart meters and smart applications customers would soon be able to monitor their energy consumptions.

One of the initiatives will be of sharing the stats with neighbours, which will encourage people to conserve energy.

“We will be sending customers’ statistics of energy consumption by their neighbours. This will inform them of energy consumption and if their use is high encourage them to rationalise consumption to reduce their monthly bills.”

Dewa commenced implementation of smart networks and meters project in November 2013, aimed at replacing all mechanical and electromechanical water and electricity meters in Dubai.

Though the replacement is estimated to cost over Dh7 billion, it will make Dewa the first service provider in the region to launch such a platform.
The new smart meters will automatically send usage readings over the latest communications systems, such as fiber optic networks, which will maintain all consumption records and consumer operations.

The smart meters project completes the implementation of smart grid networks Dewa had previously started by adopting a number of new technologies, using the latest SCADA management control centres, and intelligent control systems to achieve the highest possible levels of efficiency, availability and reliability.

Sufficient spare capacity

Last Wednesday, Saeed Al Tayer, Deputy Chairman of Dubai’s Supreme Energy Council, and Chief Executive of Dewa, emphasised that Dubai already had sufficient spare power and water capacity to meet the demands for World Expo 2020.

“We have an installed capacity of 9700 megawatts (MW). Last year, the peak load in summer reached around 6500 MW and so it means we have enough spare capacity to meet the requirements of Expo,” Al Tayer said.

No tariff hike

Al Tayer told this website recently there were no talks or plans of raising tariffs.

“No, we are not planning to raise the tariff. It is not under discussion,” he said.