ADWEC 2008 Statement of Future Capacity Requirements 2008 ...

RSB Approved Version- 4 th August 2008
4.4 Demand Scope
Prior to the 2008 Statement, the GSS / DSS calculations did not consider the impact of
electricity and water exports to the other Emirates on the required capacity
calculations as exports were either temporary and utilised spare capacity, or in the
case of electricity exports to FEWA they were isolated from the Abu Dhabi electricity
transmission system.
With the ENG fully completed in April 2008 and ADWEC having firm electricity and
water export supply contracts with:
• Fujairah Energy Company (FEC)
• Federal Electricity and Water Authority (FEWA)
along with a water only firm export contract with
• Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (SEWA)
it became necessary to include these demands in the GSS / DSS calculations for the
first time. Full details of the demand forecasts and exports can be found in Annex A.
In 2010 alone ADWEC has total firm electricity export contracts of 1,250 MW (FEC
250 MW and FEWA 1000 MW) rising to 2,950 MW (FEC 450 MW and FEWA
2,500 MW) in 2015.
The above firm contracted export electricity quantities have been added to Abu
Dhabi’s peak demand (after including transmission losses, associated auxiliary
consumption and an assumed diversity factor) in order to calculate the required
capacity using a GSS of LOLE 0.1. Thus the Northern Emirates exports are assumed
to have the same GSS as applied to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
Note that an interesting feature of the LOLE calculation is that the required capacity
does not increase at the same rate as peak demand. So the higher the level of peak
demand the smaller the percentage of reserve capacity. Thus adding the Northern
Emirates’ supply exports to the GSS calculation significantly reduces the percentage
of reserve capacity. By 2030 the percentage of reserve capacity will be just 11% of
annual peak demand, or less than half of the percentage of reserve capacity in 2008.
It is clear from press reports 11 that the Northern Emirates currently have a significant
shortage of electricity and water production capacity, and that this shortage could
possibly last for several years until new capacity is added by the relevant utilities.
This shortage of Northern Emirates’ capacity and the start of the GCC Grid in 2010
will provide ADWEC with good alternative markets for any surplus electricity
generation capacity that may arise because of delays to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi’s
mega projects. The consequences of surplus electricity generation capacity are now
much less severe than in the past when alternative export markets did not exist.
11 See for example The National newspaper, Wednesday June 11, 2008, www.thenational.ae,
Energy Crisis Slows Northern Growth.
Statement of Future Capacity Requirements 2008 – 2030 28