Dubai’s Sustainable City switches on green energy for 500 villas

Dubai’s Sustainable City has said it is now successfully producing clean and sustainable energy using solar panels. Courtesy The Sustainable City

Sustainable City, Dubai’s first residential solar project, is now online and producing green energy for more than 500 villas.

City Solar, one of the contractors involved in Sustainable City, said it had installed about 5,000 solar panels throughout the complex.

“Energy production will reach 1.2 megawatts, with the surplus energy stores in the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority’s grid to be later drawn upon to operate more than 200 villas with clean, renewable energy,” said Anwa Zebn, the chief executive of City Solar.

Once complete, the company expects 40,000 panels to decorate rooftops throughout the complex and produce up to 10MW of power at maximum capacity.

In addition, the villas come equipped with other energy-saving solutions such as insulation, solar water heaters and home appliances. All of these components will halve the energy consumption in each villa.

The solar rooftop scheme is in line with Dubai’s Shams Initiative, which supports solar rooftop installations on commercial and residential buildings. This will help the emirate reach its clean energy target of 7 per cent in power generation by 2020. Dubai plans to increase this to 25 per cent by 2030.​