Masdar partnerships

E.ON
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Utilities Middle East reviews some of the firms working alongside Masdar in the pursuit of new technologies for the clean energy industry

GE Energy

At the beginning of January, GE announced that it had become an anchor partner in the Masdar City project.

The two companies released plans to house a new Ecomagination Centre in the city, as part of GE’s wider collaboration with Abu Dhabi investment and development giant Mubadala. At around 4,000 square metres in size, the centre will showcase GE clean tech products and should provide a location where both firms can explore areas of collaboration with regard to research and development.

One of the most recent fruits of the partnership saw Masdar sign a link-up deal with GE Consumer & Industrial that has launched a pilot programme to investigate the reduction of peak power demand through the use of smart home appliances.

E.ON

As part of its investment into overseas technology, Masdar announced in May that it was teaming up with E.ON and Chinese firm DONG Energy to invest US $3.3 billion in the world’s largest wind farm. The money is being spent on the roll-out of the 650MW first phase of the London Array site, which is in the Thames Estuary.

It is hoped that the project will supply enough power for around 750,000 homes – or a quarter of Greater London – and displace around 1.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. Onshore work on the project has already begun, with offshore work expected to start in early 2011. The consortium hopes that the 175-turbine first phase will be completed in 2012, with later capacity due to exceed 1,000MW.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “The London Array is a flagship project in our drive to cut emissions by 80% by 2050 and meet future energy needs. E.ON, DONG Energy and Masdar are to be congratulated for their work on the London Array.”

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Formed by a partnership between Spanish engineering and consultancy firm Sener and Masdar in March 2008, Torresol Energy is designed to promote the development and exploitation of large and and cost-efficient solar thermal energy plants across southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the US south-west.

Torresol’s portfolio of Spanish projects includes Gemasolar – a 17MW plant based on central tower technology – and Valle 1 and 2, two parabolic trough
50MW plants.

In the Middle East, Torresol is building a tower power plant in Abu Dhabi, and hopes to build another three CSP plants before 2012. In the US, the firm is planning to establish an agreement with a renewable energy company to start the design of at least one CSP plant in the south-east of the country.

First Solar

In January this year, Masdar awarded a contract to US firm First Solar to supply 5MW of its thin film solar modules to be a part of the longest grid-connected PV network in the Middle East, supplying power to the Masdar development.

“First Solar is changing the way the world is powered by creating truly sustainable solar energy solutions,” said Jos van der Hyden, First Solar’s vice president for business development, EMEA. “First Solar manufactures solar modules with an advanced semiconductor technology and provides comprehensive PV system solutions. By constantly decreasing manufacturing costs, First Solar is creating an affordable and environmentally responsible alternative to fossil-fuel generation. First Solar set the benchmark for environmentally responsible product life cycle management by introducing the industry’s first prefunded, comprehensive collection and recycling programme for solar modules.”