GCC’s first hydropower project in Dubai

The union of Austrian company Strabag & Andritz and Turkey’s Ozkar have awarded Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA) a 1.437 billion-dirham ($ 391.2 million) contract, to start construction of a hydroelectric project in the Hatta region, which is the first of its kind in the Gulf region.

The project that is supposed to start working by February 2024, will be able to generate 250 megawatts of electricity.

The Austrian-Turkish union was able to win the competition for the main construction contract of the pumped-storage hydroelectric project, despite other offers received by DEWA from three different consortia: GE (United States), power china / Acciona (Spain) and Larsen & Toubro (India) / Voith (Germany).

In June 2017, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has awarded the French Corporation EDF a contract, in order to provide all consultancy services for the project, with a value of AED 58 million. Accordingly, the Corporation completed the engineering studies of the project, which included studies of design, geology, hydrological, geological, environmental, geotechnical and deep drilling.

This project considered an important source of energy storage, as it stores water while producing excess energy, and can, therefore, be used to save electricity during peak hours when the demand for energy is higher.

The project will mainly use the water stored at the Hatta Dam, located near the Oman border, where the current total storage capacity of the dam is 1,716 million gallons of water. Also, an upper tank will be built 300 meters above the dam, with a capacity of 880 million gallons. During peak hours, water will be pumped from the dam to the upper tank, as turbines will use solar energy.

It is worth mentioning that this project is one of the most important projects that will essentially support the AED 1.3 billion Hatta Development Plan, which has been announced since 2016.