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12 February 2025

Dewa ready to handle Dubai growth

Dewa's electricity customers increased to 530,000 last year. (EB FILE)

Published
By Karen Remo-Listana

Dubai has surplus power and there is no immediate additional requirement as the growth demand has fallen from 15 per cent to six per cent last year, according to a Dewa official.

"At present we have 7,500MW existing and 2,300MW under construction, bringing 9800MW in two years," said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, Dewa MD and CEO.

Dewa has awarded six contracts worth Dh3.3billon two months ago and is expected to award about Dh12bn more in the remainder of the year.

"For the whole year, this only assumes 15 per cent to 25 per cent of the whole contracts to be awarded," said ASA Hameed, Deputy Senior Manager – Contracts, Dewa.

These contracts include deals with Areva ABB, RWA, Siemens, Riyadh Cables, Ducab and Ghantoot Contracting Company.

He said Areva will provide 11 132kv substations; ABB three 132kv substations; Siemens will provide Mamzar with 400kv substations worth Dh300million; while Ghantoot will provide sections of pipelines worth Dh875m.

"Execution of all contracts will be within 14 to 18 months, while cable laying around 24 months," he said.

Hameed said major contracts will come from Hassyan IWPP, whose developer will be selected between Decemeber 2010 and March 2011. It will take three years to commission the plant, hence the first unit is expected to be commissioned in 2014.

Dewa has extended the bid deadline for the contract to provide consultancy services on this 1,500MW and 120million gallon-a-day plant to March 8 from February 22.

Hameed said 42 companies have purchased the bidding documents. He said: "Once the consultancy is finalised, consultants will make specification for the Hassyan 1,500MW contract, which will then be awarded to them in stages.

"Normally the consultant first makes the contract specification, then we will give two to three months for international bidders to participate and later evaluation will take another three months. By the year end and beginning of March 2011, we will be able to award the first phase of the project."

Al Tayer said previous EPC contracts tendered for the Hassyan project are now cancelled.

"The EPC contracts were cancelled and we have already informed the parties," he added.

Dewa has deferred the old Hassyan project twice in the past two years due to pricing issues. Previously, the cost of doing a power station was high, now the market trend is down so we expect the prices to come down. That is the reason we tendered the old Hassyan project twice," said Hameed.

But the actual progress of Hassyan still depends on the amount of growth Dubai sees. "Those are tentative dates. We have to monitor the load in that time as we have sufficient capacity in Dewa," said Al Tayer.

While demand grew by only single digit, the number of customers increased by double digits. This is because new units were powered by district cooling systems, which reduced consumption by 40 per cent, said Al Tayer.

Dewa's electricity customers increased 12 per cent last year to 530,000 from 467,000 in 2008, while the number of water customers rose 19.6 per cent to 469,000 from 392,000.

 

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