Dubai: Thirty small-scale solar-powered desalination plants will be operational in the next 15 months to provide animals with watering holes in Abu Dhabi’s desert environment.

Two of the plants are already in use desalting brackish water from underground aquifers into fresh potable water, said a water resources expert from the Environment Agency — Abu Dhabi (EAD).

However the cost of using solar power for bigger desalination plants that produce millions of litres of fresh water for mass human consumption is still too high, said Dr Mohammad Dawoud, Manager of Water Resources Department at EAD.

Currently the cost of one desert desalination plant is Dh3 million.

Each plant will be of identical size with the same desalination capacity of five cubic metres of water per hour. The plants will be operated remotely and solar power will be harnessed by solar panels spanning 300 square metres at each site — enough to create 45 kilowatts of electricity per hour.

“The purpose of the plants is to establish a water source for the thousands of animals in the middle of the desert where there is no power. There will be no impact on the environment and the operating cost for the next 15 years is lower than transporting oil to use to create energy,” said Dawoud.

The plants will be working six to eight hours everyday. Brine, or waste water, will be pumped to an evaporation lake measuring between 30 to 40 metres in diameter and fenced off to keep animals at bay. It will also be sealed underground to avoid any leaks into to the ground water.

“Very little salt will actually be produced. Around three cubic metres of water will be discharged per hour into the evaporation lake. From time to time it will have to be maintained and the salt removed and disposed of in a landfill,” said Dawoud.

A subsurface irrigation system will pump some of the freshwater water back underground in order to create irrigated land to grow fodder for the animals.

According to the International Desalination Association, the daily production of desalinated water in the UAE is 8.4 million cubic metres. It was announced last year that future desalination production investments by Abu Dhabi and Dubai were pegged at up to $40 billion (Dh146.8 billion) to meet increasing water demand.

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Now, bright, clean, renewable solar energy is turning to its darker side; the Charleston County jail in South Carolina.

Unlikely perhaps, but the large flat roofs of Charleston County detention center, also known as, “The House”, which aims to improve its status as one of the nation’s most crowded inmate facilities with an ongoing $100-million expansion slated for completion next year.

The solar array will also improve power consumption figures, which already reach 4.25 million kilowatts a year, through regional utility S. Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G). This is expected to double on completion of the new facility.

No mention has been made where the panels are to be placed, but the logical assumption is that they will go on the new expansion, some 323,000 square feet in size (or only slightly less than the original detention center, built in 1966, and its 1993 expansion), largely because of the two previous sites older roofs.

The plan is to cover said roof with American-made solar panels to offset a portion of the detention center’s electricity needs, through a $1.1 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, which provides funding for governmental entities and schools to install energy efficiency devices like solar power. The grant competes for $2.8 million allotted to the state for renewable energy projects through ARRA.

The county believes the panels would more than pay for themselves through energy-cost savings, and some officials even speculate that the installation could help attract “clean energy” companies to the region. This would benefit S. Carolina’s citizens, who already hold a record as the sixth largest electricity consumers in the nation.

The solar photovoltaic “farm”, described as potentially producing 640,000 kilowatts a year, or enough to power about 5,300 homes, will also be responsible for eliminating 460 metric tons per year of carbon dioxide from coal-burning generation plants. This is the same as taking 84 cars off the road, or planting 11,785 trees, or preserving 104 acres of S. Carolina’s pine forests.

S. Carolina’s electricity generation mix currently consists of 61-percent coal-fired power plants, with the state’s electric cooperatives getting fully 80 percent of their electricity from coal. The solar proposal couldn’t have come at a better time, with Waxman-Markey in the wings and S. Carolina residents waking to the dangers of burning coal or piling the ash alongside streams and communities.

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