Over the past few decades, Dubai made significant progress to become a global hub for business, tourism, and green economy, as well as one of the world's most inspiring, successful, and attractive cities for investment in various markets. This is due to the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and the directives of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council of Dubai. It has contributed to creating a happy life for all citizens, residents, visitors, and anyone who lives on our beloved land.
We work tirelessly to improve performance, productivity and quality of services provided to customers. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority’s DEWA 2021 strategy is aligned to the UAE Centennial 2071, the UAE Vision 2021, and the Dubai Plan 2021 to secure a happy future and a better life for future generations, raise the country's status as the best country in the world, and always rank first in all areas.
We have made many local and international achievements, in line with the vision of our wise leadership. The UAE, represented by DEWA, ranked first in the world in getting electricity, as per the World Bank’s Doing Business 2018 report. The extensive report uses multiple criteria to measure the ease of doing business in 190 countries around the world. DEWA also won the Global Excellence Award from the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), as the first organisation outside Europe and the first to win as a first-time applicant of this prestigious award. Through this pioneering achievement, DEWA is now in the platinum category, which is the highest international rank in the Global Excellence Index.
DEWA’s global achievements confirm the success of its effective and sustainable practices in improving energy efficiency on both supply and demand. DEWA succeeded in reducing electricity line losses from 7% to 3.3% and Unaccounted for Water from 42% to 7.1% and these are global benchmarks. Customer Minutes Lost reached 2.68 per year compared with 15 minutes for leading utilities in Europe and the USA. The fuel efficiency of DEWA’s latest power plants increased to about 90%. Our generation efficiency increased by 28.86% from 2006 to 2017. DEWA’s necessary investments total AED 81 billion over the next five years, to meet growing demand for electricity and water in the Emirate. This will provide significant investment opportunities, contribute to the growth of the green economy, and create a competitive advantage in the UAE for clean energy and energy efficiency.
We are securing our supply by diversifying the energy mix, to include clean energy to provide 7% of Dubai’s total power output from clean energy by 2020, 25% by 2030 and 75% by 2050. To achieve that, we launched many green programmes and initiatives including the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park which is the largest single site solar park in the world with a total capacity of 5,000MW by 2030. We have a clear Demand Side Management Strategy to reduce power and water consumption by 30% by 2030, and the Carbon Abatement Strategy to reduce carbon emissions by 16% by 2021.
The Shams Dubai initiative, which encourages customers to install photovoltaic panels on their rooftops, to generate electricity from solar power, is achieving great success. This coincides with the Green Charger initiative to establish infrastructure, electric vehicle charging stations, and the Smart Applications through Smart Meters and Grids initiative. This last initiative is designed to speed up service delivery and response, to ensure reconnection in case of any unplanned interruptions, while rationalising smart energy consumption by monitoring consumption details simultaneously and at any time, using smart meters. This works to achieve society’s happiness, and to support the sustainability of resources.
We are committed to keeping pace with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and being familiar with global technological developments, provided by disruptive technologies, in the main sectors of DEWA’s work. This supports DEWA’s vision to become a leading sustainable innovative global corporation. DEWA launched the Future Centre for Customer Happiness, which uses smart and digital platforms, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots for customer service. DEWA is also the first government organisation to launch Rammas, a virtual employee, making use of artificial intelligence technology to answer customer enquiries. Rammas responds to enquiries in both English and Arabic through a 24-hour chatbot. Rammas is available 7 days a week via DEWA’s website, on DEWA’s Facebook, through iOS and Android platforms, Amazon’s Alexa service, Robots, and GoogleAI. We have recruited robots as staff at DEWA and inaugurated the Blockchain initiative for Green Charger, which provides customers with several benefits. DEWA also launched a leasing initiative, in cooperation with public and private organisations. It allows the participating agencies to automate the lease renewal process, obtain a lease contract, and connect electricity and water services.
DEWA has adopted several smart technologies, notably the smart helmet and smart glasses (DAQRI), which uses virtual reality to help engineers working in power stations, as well as 3D-printing to make spare parts, and the improvement of the performance of maintenance and operations, the Big Data initiative, the smart monitoring of electrical appliances and energy consumption at home, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The adoption rate for DEWA’s smart services reached 90%, ahead of the deadline set by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to reduce the number of visitors to government offices by 80% by 2018.
These initiatives intend to make Dubai the smartest city in the world. We have been successful in encouraging sustainable development, socially, environmentally and economically, of Dubai in particular and the UAE in general.