Abu Dhabi’s power regulator to submit solar plan to Executive Council

Abu Dhabi plans to achieve 7 per cent of its energy needs from renewables by 2020, including solar power. Silvia Razgova / The National

Abu Dhabi's electricity regulator plans to submit a recommendation to the Executive Council for a solar rooftop panel programme.

That is breathing life into an ambitious plan to have residents generate clean energy at home.

The emirate plans to achieve 7 per cent of its energy needs from renewables by 2020.

The target hinges not only on massive solar installations in the desert, but also installing 500 megawatts of solar panels on rooftops.

That would be equivalent to five Shams 1 solar power stations, or a third of the emirate's total renewable energy target.

Such rooftop solar programmes usually depend on a feed-in tariff, a price at which the utility agrees to buy excess power produced by residents.

The Regulation and Supervision Bureau, the independent power and water regulator, plans to give a recommendation next year to Abu Dhabi’s Executive Council on a price to sell power to the grid. It will be based on more than two years’ of data from a 2.3MW pilot programme.

“We’re ready to recommend one,” said Nick Carter, the regulator’s director general. “We have sufficient data to tell the Government that ‘if you want to go down the feed-in tariff route, this is the price you’ll have to pay’.”

Others in the region are also looking at similar solar programmes. For instance, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority is studying a solar feed-in tariff, and Saudi government entities have installed solar arrays on rooftops.

In the past two years, installers have been benefiting from a 60 per cent fall in the price of solar panels, thanks to a boom in manufacturing capacity in China.

Solar panel prices have plummeted so low that western producers have been pushed to file for bankruptcy, consolidate, or urge their governments to file trade cases against China.

In 1977, a watt of a crystalline silicon photovoltaic cell cost US$76.67; today, it costs 74 cents.

“They’re not going to become much cheaper in terms of technology,” said Mr Carter.

In the Abu Dhabi pilot programme, every kilowatt hour of power cost 110 fils for installation, maintenance and cleaning.

The regulator is taking into account the experiences in Germany and Spain, where the governments had to roll back tariffs for economic reasons or because of the glut of rooftop capacity.

“We’ve been quite cautious,” said Mr Carter. “We have been definitely not advocating any feed-in tariffs because we want to be absolutely certain that a feed-in tariff does not put the government at a disadvantage in 10 years’ time.”