Solar power soon be available to home owners in Dubai
Tapping the sun to power UAE homes
By Emmanuelle Landais, Staff Reporter /21 April 2007
source: Gulf News
http://www.gulfnews.com/nation/Technology/10119770.html
Dubai: Houses fully powered by solar energy will soon be available for home owners in the country. Scandinavian renewable energy experts will be in Abu Dhabi and Dubai later this month to promote solar housing in the UAE after working on the idea in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Representatives from Swedish company Switchpower will present the concept of developing large residential housing areas that will use a fraction of energy from the local power network.
Yvonne Andersson, Middle East senior adviser for Switchpower based in the UAE, said: “We have a lot of [solar] energy and it is very important to do something with it. “The UAE could really benefit from this, especially if it is adopted by developers.”
Air conditioning
The houses focus on insulation and have tripled glazed windows. Air conditioning systems, too, will be solar powered. According to the proposal, the houses have been designed to create shadow areas throughout the day with an insulated south facing wall while the angle of the roof is calculated to achieve maximum performance from the solar power system.
“In Sweden, solar power is being used in a lot of different places and we don’t have as much sun as here. It is being used in football stadiums, homes and businesses,” said Andersson. Currently there are no solar powered houses in the Middle East but Bahrain is apparently quite interested in the project, according to Andersson.
“These houses can then be [connected to] wind power to continue providing power when the sun has set,” she said. The cost of a house fully equipped with solar cells could not be defined by Andersson, but she said the investment in the beginning was worth it in the end as the sun is free.
New age: Electricity after sundown
Photovoltaic solar cells are placed on the roof. The electricity produced from the cells is fed to the air-conditioning compressor by an inverter. The compressor, which is oversized, will supply the fan coil unit with coolant and the surplus of cooling capacity will be stored in an accumulator tank and will be used later when the solar cells are not producing electricity.
This provides a system that uses maximum PV power capacity with no further need for imported electricity during the evening and night. The stored cooling capacity in the accumulator tank is enough to cool the house when the sun has set.