SIEMENS

Greater contrasts are hard to imagine. About nine percent of the planet’s known oil reserves can be found beneath the desert sands of Abu Dhabi, yet this is also where the world’s first CO₂-neutral metropolis - Masdar City - is being created (see article “Sustainable Buildings – Masdar City”, Pictures of the Future 2/2008) and (see article “Plugging Buildings into the Big Picture”, Pictures of the Future 2/2009). Just a few miles away, on Yas Island, racing cars are roaring around the most modern Formula One circuit in the world. Meanwhile, taking shape on nearby Saadiyat Island is a leisure and vacation paradise, which will also be a habitat for rare animal species such as the hawkbill turtle.

Abu Dhabi is growing, and in the process it must strike a balance between all of these paradoxical developments. But one thing is clear: The future belongs to energy from renewable sources. With the Masdar City project, which is currently being concretized, municipal leaders are showing their commitment to this trend. The city is being built near the international airport. And by relying on renewable sources of energy - including photovoltaics and solar thermal technology - it should be able to self-sufficiently cover the needs of its roughly 40,000 residents and an expected 50,000 commuters. These needs will be relatively modest - thanks in part to ultramodern building management systems. Siemens could play an important role in Masdar City in areas including a planned smart power grid system, the transportation system, and infrastructures for power generation.

Masdar City is only one of the projects that Siemens has been working on in Abu Dhabi. In 2008, for instance, the company built a transformer substation near the city, on Saadiyat Island, which is expected to provide the power supply for the entire island. The facility was designed to supply enough power for up to 150,000 people, who will ultimately live in almost 50,000 private apartments and houses on the island or stay in up to 29 hotels there.

Siemens and its Austrian consortium partner PKE Electronics AG supplied and installed all the electrical and electronic systems and equipment for the Yas Marina circuit on neighboring Yas Island, including the control and monitoring systems needed for racing, the various security and access systems, and the power supply, a 22 kV medium-voltage network with 18 transformer units. At this circuit, for the first time in the history of Formula One, a race started in daylight and ended after dark. This is also why race marshals no longer wave flags to signal important messages to drivers. This job is now performed by very bright LED panels alongside the track.

Siemens’ activities in the emirate go well beyond infrastructures. The company has invested a total of $75 million in two Masdar Clean Tech funds; the most recent of which was launched in January 2010. The fund invests primarily in companies in the fields of green energy technologies, environmental resources, energy efficiency, and materials efficiency. “We regard this as a strategic investment that also strengthens Siemens’ role as a technology partner for Masdar over the long term,” says Joachim Kundt, CEO of Siemens in the Lower Gulf Region.

Another Masdar investment - the London Array wind park, for which Masdar is acting as an investor and project developer - is also based on Siemens technology - although it’s in the UK, far from the sands of the emirate. Siemens Energy was commissioned to equip the offshore wind park, which is located at the mouth of the Thames, with 175 wind turbines and to connect it to the power grid. With an output of 630 megawatts, London Array will be the world’s largest wind park of its kind when it is completed in 2012.

Through its investments, the emirate is making it very clear that the contradictions in the here and now may one day in hindsight turn out to only have seemed paradoxical. After all, Abu Dhabi is preparing thoroughly for the post-oil era by working with its partners to develop and apply new technologies - until the day arrives when it will cost more to extract the planet’s remaining oil than to use alternatives such as solar and wind power.

Who knows? Maybe by then, at the Yas Marina circuit, the racing cars won’t be powered by combustion engines - and then, only on special occasions for true fans, there will be races featuring the vintage gasoline-powered cars of yesteryear.