a case study on the various electrical technologies used in the innovative city of Masdar.

1. Harnessing RenewableResources:
the Masdar City plan

2. Introduction
The Masdar City started in 2006 in Abu Dhabi, in the United
Arab Emirates.
It is a planned city, which is being built by Masdar, a subsidiary
of Mubadala Development Company, with the majority of seed
capital provided by the government of Abu Dhabi.
The city is planned as one of the world’s first completely
sustainable communities, combining renewable energy
sources and efficient resource usage.

3.  The city implements its zero carbon-footprint goal in two
ways-
 Producing energy by using only renewable resources.
 Reducing the energy consumption of the city by using
efficient technologies.

4. Generation of energy
Masdar ‘s sources of energy include:
The 100-megawatt Shams 1 solar power plant.
A 10-megawatt solar photovoltaic plant.
Masdar City’s 1-megawatt solar rooftop installations.
A hydrogen power plant of 400 MW capacity that uses carbon
capture method.

5. Solar energy
 Masdar City has an 87,000 panel solarfarm
called the Shams 1 solar Power station
that lies beyond the city’s walls on 2.5
square kilometers of land with a capacity of
100 MWs.
 Shams 1 is a Concentrated Solar
Power(CSP) system that uses parabolic
trough system technology.

6. Technology used
Concentrated Solar Power systems use mirrors or lenses to
focus a large area of sunlight, or solar thermal energy, onto a
small area. When the concentrated light is converted to heat,
it drives a heat engine connected to an electrical power
generator. The result is electricity.
A Parabolic Trough is a type of solar thermal collector that is
straight in one dimension and curved as a parabola in the
other two, lined with a polished metal mirror. A parabolic
trough is made of a number of solar collector modules (SCM)
fixed together to move as one solar collector assembly (SCA)

7. Shams 1

8.  The Masdar City also has a small concentrating solar 100 kW
demo site that uses the beam-down technology.
 “The Beam Down Project” is a joint pilot project of the Masdar
Institute, Japan’s Cosmo Oil Company and the Tokyo Institute
of Technology

9. The Beam Down Technology
Thirty-three
heliostats circle the
66-foot tower in
three concentric
rings. Motors adjust
the elevation and
angle of the
heliostats throughout
the day to track the
sun and direct the
reflected light toward
the underside of the
tower.
An array of 45
mirrors made to
reflect as much solar
radiation as possible
are arranged in
concentric circles,.
When the reflected
sun from the
heliostats reaches
the tower array, the
mirrors redirect the
light down toward
the base of the
tower.
A ceramic receiver
at the base of the
tower absorbs the
radiation. The
radiation heats a
tank filled with
molten salt, air, or
water. The medium
then heats water to
produce steam and
drive a turbine

10. Photovolatic cells
 The PV system located on the roof of the Masdar city
buildings is capable of producing 1 Mw of clean energy.
 Photovoltaic cells typically involves a semiconductor, such as
silicon, attached to an electrical circuit. When light hits the
semiconductor it causes electrons, which are negatively
charged particles, to flow, creating electricity in the circuit.
 At a commercial scale, this process only harnesses 15 to 18
per cent of the Sun’s energy when using standard silicon-
based photovoltaic (PV) cells. The efficiency is poor because
the cells do not absorb infra-red light, which has a longer
wavelength than visible light, and is inefficient at absorbing
blue and green light, which occupies the shorter-wavelength
end of the visible spectrum.

11. Dispersive Prismatic Lens
This combines the functions of a prism, which separates
or disperses white light into the various colour
wavelengths, and a lens, which concentrates light.
It causes spectral splitter photovoltaic system- it splits
up the light spectrum and, through this, generates
electricity.
This method showed an increase in efficiency of 15 per
cent relative to flat PV panels.
Other features include-
• Special antireflective glass which improves light absorption and
reduces surface dust.
• It protects the module surface from humidity that could cause a loss in
the module’s performance.

12. The IRENA headqurters in Masdar with the rooftop
installation of PV cells

13. Carbon capturing
 Masdar has a special Carbon Capture ,use
and storage System (CCUS) that has the
provision to capture 800,000 tons of carbon.
 The CO2 feed stream from the Emirates Steel
plant, containing 90% CO2 is transferred to a
common compression and dehydration facility.
 The feed stream is then compressed into
dense phase; delivering a CO2 stream of over
98% purity, through 50km of the pipeline
network, to be injected in an onshore field.

14.  Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is the implementation
of various techniques for increasing the amount
of crude oil that can be extracted from an oil field.
 Gas injection is the most-commonly used approach
in enhanced oil recovery with gases such as Natural
gas, CO2, Nitrogen being the commonly injected
gases.
 The benefits of reinjecting carbon dioxide rather than
natural gas include:
1) securing the long-term storage of the heat-trapping
gas that contributes to climate change; and
2) preserving cleaner-burning natural gas so it can be
used for power generation or as a transportation fuel.

15. Enhanced oil recovery through
CO2 injection

16.  Besides this, the HPAD(Hydrogen Plant
Abu Dhabi) is a 60/40 joint venture
between Masdar and BP which is the
world’s first commercial-scale hydrogen-
fuelled power plant utilising CCS. The
hydrogen power plant will generate
approximately 400 MW of low-carbon
electricity, and could provide more than
5 per cent of all Abu Dhabi’s current
power generation.

17. Transport
 There are no fossil fuelled cars in Masdar
City to contribute to the release of carbon
dioxide.
 Masdar collaborated with Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries (MHI) to produce electric
vehicles that are computer- driven and
navigate a complex of tunnels under the
concrete base.
 These vehicles, called the personal rapid
transit pods, or PRTs run on magnetic
tracks using electric power.

18.  Three flatbed Freight Rapid Transit (FRT)
vehicles will play the role of trucks and vans
to transport deliveries to and from the
Masdar city.
 The FRTs also will transport waste from the
campus for sorting and reuse or recycling.

19. Technology used
 The vehicles are entirely powered by
Lithium-Phosphate batteries.
 The range of 60 kilometers on a 1.5 hour
charge
 In the PRT corridors, magnets have been
embedded in the concrete floor every four
meters to help the PRTs navigate, while an
overhead antenna provides a wireless link
between the PRTs and the system
computer.

20. Underground PRT network

21. Cooling system
 The Masdar city has the world’s first proprietary double-
effect solar thermal cooling system and the only one to
combine two different concentrating solar thermal
collector technologies in a single system.
 The Green air conditioning systems consists of
conventional compression chillers powered by electricity
from photovoltaic panels or concentrated solar power
plants

22.  It is especially well-suited to address peak cooling
demand as the solar thermal energy supply closely
matches high daytime cooling demand. Its optimal
cooling temperature is at 24 degrees
 Conventional chillers and air conditioners use
electricity to run a compressor while a double-effect
absorption chiller such as the one at Masdar City
uses heat to activate a chemical process that
provides chilled water for chilling.
 The solar cooling pilot installation produces cooling
equivalent to about 80 conventional split-type air-
conditioning systems, leading to annual emissions
reductions of about 70 000 kg of carbon dioxide.

23. Solar Air Conditioning

24. Elevators
 To prove its 100% renewable target, the
city of Masdar uses regenerative elevators.
 A regenerative converter in an elevator is a
device that transmits power distributed by
a traction elevator so that it can be reused
by the building's power supply for other
electrical systems.
 They use less energy than non-
regenerative drives, and reduce the excess
heat in the building and are known to save
upto 30% of the energy.

25. The permanent magnet motors in Masdar’s drives
are capable of bidirectional energy flow
When power flows into the motor, it creates a lifting
torque on the shaft and the carriage is lifted. When
the carriage travels down, the motor acts as a
generator, transforming mechanical power into
electrical power and pumping current back into the
facility’s electrical grid to use elsewhere.
When a cab goes up with a light load and down
with a heavy load, the system generates more
power than it uses

26. Regenerative Elevators

27. Conclusion
 The Masdar project is supported by the known environmental
organizations like World Wide Fund for Nature and Greenpeace.
 On a per person basis, Masdar City uses less than half of the
water that an average city uses. This is achieved through the
use of high efficiency appliances as well as smart meters that
can detect leaks in water system. Additionally, 100% of the
wastewater generated from the city is treated and reused in
landscaping, which has led to huge water savings. Masdar City
has also taken great efforts to manage its waste, with 96% of its
construction waste reused in other ways to build the city. The
Masdar city has certainly become a model for sustainable urban
development regionally and globally, seeking to be a
commercially viable development that delivers the highest
quality living and working environment with the lowest possible
ecological footprint.

28. references
 www.masdar.ae
 Gulfnews.com
 www.thefuturebuild.com
 en.wikipedia.org
 www.tradearabia.com
 www.mubadala.com
 Bullis K. “A Zero-Emissions City in the
Des- ert.” Technology Review 2009