Shams 1, Madinat Zayed, United Arab Emirates

摘要

The Arabian Peninsula might seem like the ideal location for a concentrating solar power plant, but developers of the 100-MW Shams 1 CSP project in the UAE - the world's largest at its inauguration in March - found that things were nowhere near that simple. The small nation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), despite having the world's seventh-largest proven reserves of both oil and gas, has been working hard to diversify its economy over the past two decades. Though hydrocarbons still account for the large majority of its economic activity and more than 80% of government revenue, it has managed to significantly reduce the share of hydrocarbons in its total export figures. But the rapid growth of its financial and international trade sectors over the past decade has meant equally rapid growth in electricity demand, which has stretched the UAE's grid to its limits. According to International Energy Agency estimates, the UAE's electricity consumption in 2011 was 83.79 TWh, a more than 50% increase since 2001. Installed capacity, almost entirely natural gas-fired thermal plants, was 23.25 GW in 2009, according to the Energy Information Agency. Despite its ample gas reserves, the UAE is also working to diversify its generation portfolio, having contracted with Korea Electric Power Corp. to construct four nuclear reactors, two of which are now under construction, with the first scheduled to come online in 2017 and the others expected to be completed by 2020.