With a planned population of 50,000 residents, Masdar City in Abu Dhabi will be the world’s first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city completely powered by renewable energy. As it nears completion of the first leg of development, the futuristic project is now adding another first — a new smart appliance pilot program that will measure and transmit real time power consumption over a two-year period. Involving some of the city’s first residents, the program will test how GE’s smart appliances, also known as demand response enabled appliances, and GE’s Home Energy Manager technology can plug into a smart grid to lower power demand in the home and across the city.
Living laboratory: The first phase of Masdar City, known as the “Silicon Valley of the Middle East, will be completed in 2013. The artist’s rendition above depicts the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, which will be the first building completed and the site of the two-year test.
Unlike the demand response test currently underway in Louisville, Kentucky, the Masdar City test — which is the first outside of the US — will use products specifically designed and made for the pilot program and it will not involve GE employees, as in the Kentucky project. The test results will be closely watched in the European Union, which aims to have 80 percent of all households equipped with a smart electricity meter by 2020.
Green blueprints: In Masdar City, solar, geothermal and wind energy will provide power. Water will be recycled and waste materials will also be converted to energy. Traditional cars won’t be allowed and residents will instead use light rail or small electric powered personal vehicles.
The pilot residences will be equipped with a Home Energy Manager and European-style and size demand response-enabled refrigerators, cooktops and combination clothes washers/dryers that work on 220-volt/50-hertz platforms. During the pilot, the energy manager and appliances will receive signals from the grid, which will simulate peak energy usage periods. In response, the energy manager and smart appliances will customize the appliances’ actions to save energy and reduce demand on the grid.
The program’s real time component is of particular importance, as its absence is one of the main obstacles utilities face in smart grid planning. To gain the required level of detail about energy use, it’s necessary to either individually measure the consumption of each appliance — so-called “sub-metering” — or to make an estimate. However, smart appliances that are built with technology to measure their own power consumption and then transmit it in real time constitute the most cost-effective and non-intrusive way of understanding peak power demand and energy consumption of every major device in the home. In comparison to the general information provided by a typical utility bill, the level of detail provided by smart appliances would be more like the itemized bills used by cell phone companies.
The Masdar City pilot project is part of the broader relationship between GE and Mubudala Development Company — which owns Masdar — covering aviation, commercial finance, industry and corporate learning.
* Read the October 5 announcement
* Watch a video about Masdar City
* Read coverage in Abu Dhabi’s The National
* Read about Masdar City in The Toronto Star
* Learn about GE’s ecomagination center at Masdar City
* Read coverage in Louisville’s Business First
* Visit the Masdar City website
* Watch videos about GE’s smart grid research in the U.S.
* Read “GE’s smart grid: Introducing the “Zero Energy” home” on GE Reports
* Learn about GE’s smart grid efforts in Florida, Oklahoma and Houston
* Read about GE's research with the Deptartment of Energy
* Hear about the smart grid straight from our scientists on their blog
