Innovate or stagnate

DUBAI-- Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has launched its Innovation Week and in collaboration with its partners, universities, entrepreneurs, and innovators water and power and participation of international spokespeople who specialize in energy, sustainability and water innovation.

This supports the directives of Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to host UAE Innovation Week from 22-28 November. Sheikh Mohammed said that, "Innovation is not an option or a culture but a lifestyle, and governments and companies that do not innovate risk losing their competitiveness and consequently will fall behind."

DEWA’s Innovation Week comprises several innovative activities and events, including a Government Innovation Lab in which real-life tools will be used to promote innovation. It also incorporates an ‘Innovation Exhibition’, through which DEWA’s employees, innovators and emerging companies will receive updates about the latest innovations to support DEWA’s work, and will have the opportunity to test these innovations.

The exhibition showcases services and products which are not yet on the market, and features the latest research and technical concepts. DEWA has also organized inspirational talks under the title ‘I Talk’, with the participation of innovative high-profile guest speakers, who will host talks for DEWA staff and attending members of the public. The objective is to spread a culture of innovation by sharing experiences about the application of innovation, so that attendees can learn about how innovation is best planned and executed.

DEWA has also organized a ‘Design Thinking Lab’ that comprises a series of workshops, spread over three days, to explore challenges faced by DEWA, and to discover innovative methods to overcome these challenges, using the ‘Better Today’ design thinking methods. DEWA will host an Innovation Conference, featuring international experts whose speeches focus on the roles that sustainability and renewable energy have played in some of the most important innovations worldwide. DEWA has also organized a Build-It-Yourself Robotics Kits competition for schoolchildren from the age of six, up to high-school age. The robotics kits are equipped with sustainable innovative gadgets, such as solar panels, sensors, chargeable batteries, and programmable microcontrollers.

The activities also include the launch of ‘My Innovation’ (Ibtikari in Arabic), to encourage innovators and designers from the UAE and abroad to offer innovations via a smart platform. This includes science and engineering competitions for university students and engineering specialists to identify scientific solutions and innovations in sustainability and water.

"To support the directives of our President, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who stressed the importance of innovation to the UAE’s strategy, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, declared 2015 to be the Year of Innovation, and launched the UAE National Innovation Strategy. I am pleased to welcome you to Dubai Electricity and Water Authority’s (DEWA’s) head office today. Together, we will observe a moment that will be remembered in history, as we experience the first day of the UAE’s annual Innovation Week, launched by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum."

He added, "Today, DEWA ranks alongside some of the biggest companies in the world, thanks to the excellent standards of efficiency and reliability in management and technology it has achieved since its formation. This could never have happened without accurate planning, and the implementation of innovative projects and solutions, adopted and used by DEWA," said HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, in his opening address."

"DEWA’s innovative projects have led it to become an international model of excellence in innovation of service development, management and technical efficiency. The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park is the biggest single-site solar project in the world, based on the Independent Power Producer (IPP) model. Working in cooperation with the private sector, we want the Solar Park to have a capacity of 3,000 megawatts by 2030."

"We are also advancing our smart grid project to connect over one million smart meters to a smart integrated electricity and water grid. Starting from the main production stations, all the way to the end consumer point, the smart grid will host a wide range of applications to manage consumption with the highest levels of efficiency. At DEWA, we are proud of the progress we have made with the Green Charger initiative, to establish an effective infrastructure for electric vehicles to reduce carbon emissions and to achieve the Emirate’s sustainability goals. The Shams Dubai initiative is another practical example of the success of our innovation strategy," added Al Tayer.

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