STEPS TO MORE EFFICIENCY NEEDED
Dubai,
UAE: Nearly 1.8
billion megawatt hours of energy was consumed by the UAE to achieve a total
annual GDP of $377 billion in 2013, according to Heliocentris, a German market leader in energy saving
solutions. This amount of energy could be sufficient to power all of the nation’s households
for more than 15 years and around 70 million households for a whole year.
The figures were released ahead of Critical
Communication Middle East 2014, a trade specific show dedicated to critical
communications technologies in the Middle East, which opened today at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai.
Heliocentris offers clean energy solutions, training and research in the field of
Information & Communication Technologies (ICT), to help businesses
to control, monitor and reduce their energy usage, providing technology to
improve both operational and financial performance so as to meet the next
generation’s energy demands today.
A research report by World Resources Institute revealed
that in 2013, the UAE used 481 tonnes of oil equivalent (“toe”) for every $1m
of its GDP. By comparison, a predominantly urban population such as Japan uses
154 toes for every $1 million of GDP, more than two thirds less than the UAE. On the basis of a total annual GDP of $377
billion in 2013, the energy used to achieve the total GDP equates to 1.8
billion Megawatt hours.
Commenting, Michael Kutschenreuter, General
Manager of Heliocentris’ Dubai based Middle East operations said: “Everyone
knows that with natural resources being cheap and freely available in the UAE,
it is the obvious fuel of choice both domestically and industrially. However, it’s only when you drill into these
figures that you realise what a staggering amount of energy is involved and,
more importantly, by how much it could be reduced. It is therefore important to implement energy saving solutions, based
primarily on sustainable energy, such as solar and photovoltaic systems.
Gradually we are seeing more and more customers switching to our technology,
with the know-how that it can save them more than 50% of their diesel
consumption, especially in the telecoms sector.”
Since Heliocentris began operating in the UAE
in 2012, their energy efficiency solutions have saved more than 10,000 tonnes
of CO2 emissions. That is equivalent to planting a forest of 1,000 trees. The
Company is clearly the technology partner of choice for leading
telecommunications giants, with du deciding to convert all possible off-grid
sites to smart hybrid power solutions with the deployment of Heliocentris’ solutions.
This is in direct support of the UAE Government’s strategy towards sustainable
energy, and the national objective to reduce diesel consumption and CO2
emission by 50%.
In its current roll-out-phase, the Company targets
primarily base stations of mobile telecom operators in world regions with poor
and unreliable grid-coverage such as the Middle East, Africa and
South-East-Asia, successfully installing several hundred systems in the field
already. The German firm recently acquired FutureE Fuel Cell Solutions GmbH, a
leading integrator of fuel cell systems for applications in the telecoms sector,
and plans to imminently bring the international technology to the Middle East
region.
The combination of FutureE and Heliocentris
will create a new market leader in Germany for fuel cell based power solutions
in stationary applications from 1kW to 20kW. The integration of Heliocentris’
energy management system into the fuel cell technology of FutureE will enable
high performance solutions for uninterrupted power supply, which at comparable
acquisition cost will allow for significantly lower operating expenditure as
conventional solutions based on diesel generators. Moreover, these solutions
will be free of CO2-emissions, thus wholly environmentally friendly and
perfectly suited to support the UAE Government’s strategy towards sustainable energy.
“We have seen a steadily growing interest from
some of the leading telecom operators to combine different sources of
sustainable energy, including fuel cells. We definitely have the right approach
and technology to meet the high requirements in terms of security and
availability for Tetra Networks where we are able to provide completely clean
energy solutions for this increasing demand in the market,”
Kutschenreuter added.
About
Heliocentris Energy FZE
Heliocentris Energy FZE, based
in Dubai’s Silicon Oasis, is a technology leader in energy efficiency services
and distributed power solutions for customers around the globe in the field of
Information & Communication Technologies as well as Training and Research.
The company's flagship product "Energy Manager" enables smart
connectivity between different components in hybrid energy supply clusters,
such as batteries, solar panels, conventional diesel generators or fuel cells,
thereby substantially increasing efficiency and decreasing the ecological
footprint of an installation at much lower operating cost. In its current
roll-out-phase the company targets primarily base stations of mobile telecom
operators in world regions with poor and unreliable grid-coverage such as the
Middle East and South-East-Asia and has successfully installed several hundred
systems in the field already. Further key markets currently in development are
mission-critical mobile and stationary applications that require reliable,
autonomous power-supply over longer time horizons than conventional batteries
can deliver. The company has 150 employees and is headquartered in Berlin with
branch offices in Munich, Dubai, Vancouver and Johannesburg.
