Category Archives: Energy

UAE’s green city grabs the attention of international researchers

Posted on by
Reply

Masdar city, in the heart of the Gulf desert, on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, has no light switches or water taps. In Masdar, movement sensors control lighting and water in order to cut down electricity and water consumption by nearly half. The city is touted by the UAE as possibly “one of the world’s most sustainable eco-cities.”

And now University of Birmingham researchers are presenting it as a model to teach the UK and the world about saving energy and resources, contrasting it with energy systems in Birmingham, United Kingdom.

They analyzed the differences and similarities between Masdar, founded very recently in 2008 against an urban environment, and Birmingham, a well-established post-industrial city that has evolved over 400 years. “Masdar City benefits from starting from a blank slate, whereas Birmingham has existing processes, procedures and an ageing infrastructure to negotiate,” according to the researchers.

Masdar is primarily powered by Shams 1, one of the largest concentrated solar power plants in the Middle East, and it houses the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, which carries out renewable energy research.

“We compared two very different cities – both aspiring to be ‘low-carbon’. Masdar has started well by building low-rise, energy-efficient buildings with smart metering,” says lead author Susan Lee, from the department of civil engineering. “Data from such buildings can help to change people’s behaviour and help develop more energy-efficient new and retrofitted UK buildings. The UAE is a hot and arid place; experience gained in Masdar will help us plan here in the UK for projected hotter summers, with more frequent heatwaves, particularly in cities, as the climate changes.”

Birmingham, says the researcher, has a few things to teach Masdar as well, including how the city adapted to new energy requirements. Lee believes that Masdar can also benefit from her university’s research into hydrogen fuel-cell cars.

Egypt’s scientists want to redirect sunlight to narrow streets

Posted on by
Reply

A group of Egyptian scientists at Ain Shams University have come up with the idea for translucent panels that are specifically fitted to be able to divert natural sunlight into densely-crowded alleyways, and can get easily positioned over roof tops, on a lower budget.

The scientists argue that a variety of health problems in overcrowded spaces—as seen all across the Arab world, including Egypt—are a result of the lack of sun exposure.

The proposed panel improves illumination by 200% and 400% in autumn and winter as per research simulations – the corrugated “sine-wave-shaped” structure is to be ideally installed on building roofs, only one meter beyond the roof edge, facing the sun and directing its light downwards into the alleys by diverging it.

“We expect the device to provide illumination to perform everyday tasks, and improve the quality of light and health conditions in dark areas,” Amr Safwat, a professor of electronics and communications engineering at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, told Science Daily.

Safwat is one of the authors of the study proposing the panel, published in Optics Express this month.

Previous structures used redirecting panels or guiding tubes that are optimized for certain solar altitude ranges, and which were suited for Middle Europe specifically; they also only direct the light upwards into the depth of a room and not into the depth of narrow streets, the researchers wrote. But the suggested panel, an improved model, can be tilted and operates over a wider range of solar altitude. “The fan-out angle exceeds 80% for certain solar altitudes and the transmitted power percentage varies from 40% to 90% as the solar altitude varies from 10°C degrees to 80°C,” the study reads.

The idea was to still use a sustainable source of energy to replace a conventional one—saving energy and reducing carbon emissions—while maintaining cost-effectiveness. The researchers say they have done this; the panels are made from polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), a type of thermoplastic material similar to synthetic glass available at low costs, and common press forming equipments are used in the panel’s manufacture.

Safwat and his team told the press they would eventually build a full-scale model 10 times bigger for validation and testing purposes, and they plan to market and commercialize their panels.

The Ain Shams university researchers were funded by the Science and Technology Development Fund (STDF).

El-Baz wants to solve Egypt’s problems from space

Posted on by
Reply

Following the recent and ongoing political upheaval in Egypt, Farouk El-Baz, the Egyptian-born director of Boston University’s Center for Remote Sensing, is suggesting his major development corridor construction project as a solution to Egypt’s biggest problems again, hoping the new government may be more attentive.

The project envisions building a “new Nile basin” parallel to the original river to the west, but one of asphalt instead. He wants to have an eight-line superhighway from Sudan to the Mediterranean, connected to all the major cities along the Nile basin. This should ease the population encroaching along the fertile Nile basin and offer millions of new land for agriculture and industry, El-Baz tells The Boston Globe.

El-Baz has been trying to sell his idea to successive Egyptian governments since Hosni Mubarak was president. While Mubarak’s governments was unresponsive, the first government formed after his ouster was excited about it and started selling the project as “Egypt’s salvation.” This government was dissolved under heavy protesting however, and the project was shelved again during the rule of Mohamed Morsi, the recently ousted president. Now, El-Baz is hoping the new government might bring the project, which would cost a whooping US$23.7 billion, back on the table.

There has been vast criticism of El-Baz’s project in Egypt, with some claiming it was overly optimistic, some arguing it was unaffordable and others suggesting the new population centres created would be prone to serious water shortages. El-Baz, who has been working for 30 years on this vision, refutes these claims and offers solutions to the problems. The funding, he says, should come from the private sector which would reap economic rewards immediately and the water can come from Nasser’s Lake, the large water reservoir at the High Dam.

You can read the full article at The Boston Globe.

Management row threatens to blow Sahara solar dream

Posted on by
Reply

Cross-posted from the Nature News blog on behalf of Quirin Schiermeier.

Plans to supply Europe with electricity generated in North Africa suffered another blow this week when the DESERTEC Foundation, set up in 2009 to promote the idea, pulled out of the industrial consortium which is trying to advance the €400-billion (US$514-billion) project.

The split, agreed upon during an extraordinary DESERTEC board meeting on 27 June, is the climax of growing tensions between the founders of the project and the Dii consortium — including Deutsche Bank and German energy utilities Eon and RWE — over management and strategy issues. Solar power capacities are expanding throughout North Africa and the Middle East — but Dii has recently scaled back ambitions, hinting to political and technical problems with transmitting massive amounts of electricity from North Africa to Europe.

The DESERTEC foundation — sole owner of the project’s brand name — has been increasingly unhappy with how internal discussions over the future of the project leaked to the press.

“It was always clear to us that our idea of producing electricity from the deserts (…) was never an easy task and will always face extreme challenges,” Thiemo Gropp, director of the DESERTEC Foundation, said in a statement.

“However, after many months filled with a lot of discussions we had to conclude that the DESERTEC Foundation needs to preserve its independence. [Our exit] is the result of many irresolvable disputes between the two entities in the area of future strategies, obligations and their communication.”

Gropp said the dispute has “negatively affected” DESERTEC’s reputation but he did not rule out future cooperation between the two organizations.

Analysts have repeatedly criticized the project as too big and expensive. Pulling the plug on its loss-making solar business, German engineering giant Siemens, based in Munich, quit Dii last year. Technology supplier Bosch, based in Stuttgart, also pulled out last year.