Monday, June 13, 2005

Power grid planned :: Khaleej Times

DUBAI – The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority will have a power grid between Dubai and Abu Dhabi in place by the first quarter of 2006 to take care of any eventuality like the June 9 blackout in Dubai. In fact, the power grid project was to be taken up in August, but the implementation was put off following changes in the course of the pipelines, Dewa sources told Khaleej Times.

Meanwhile, a Swedish company has been asked to go into the reasons for the failure of the main sub-station at Jebel Ali, which led to the June 9 power breakdown, affecting the entire city.
Abu Dhabi city is about 100 kms from Dubai city with little development between. Sharjah city is adjacent to Dubai city. Aren't the benefits is interconnection is this direction stronger. Are there plans to link the Dubai and Sharjah systems?

2 Comments:

Blogger Keef said...

Sharjah has no spare capacity. So it would benefit Sharjah to be linked to Dubai's grid, but would not benefit Dubai. Abu Dhabi, I don't know what their capacity is. Dubai apparently has about 50% more capacity than is needed today, but they are building new power stations like crazy because the anticipated demand (current pop 1.4 million expected to rise to 3 million within 15 years) is growing exponentially.

The UAE grid was talked about after the last major blackout six years ago, but I don't know if anything came of that. There has also been talk of a GCC-wide grid. Talk.

11:31 PM  
Blogger John B. Chilton said...

Yes, Sharjah has no excess capacity. My question was an oblique way of asking why the sytems have never been interconnected.

For readers interested in more of keefieboy's thought on the powergrid go here.

11:50 PM  

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