DEWA shapes the future of utilities using Artificial Intelligence

The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) is continuing to progress the adoption of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI)in its operational activities and services.

DEWA started its AI journey in 2017 and developed a road map for AI techniques.

HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, said that using AI at DEWA to provide smart and innovative services aligns with its strategy to achieve the Dubai 10X initiative. The initiative was launched by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to develop Dubai Government services, putting Dubai 10 years ahead of other global cities.

Al Tayer noted that in 2014, DEWA completed the smart transformation of all its services by 100%, less than a year after the Smart Dubai initiative was launched. DEWA also initiated the AI Steering Committee to effectively contribute to its efforts to make Dubai a global hub for disruptive technologies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Digital DEWA

DEWA launched Digital DEWA as its digital arm, with four pillars, making DEWA the world’s first digital utility to use autonomous systems for renewable energy, storage, expansion in AI adoption, and providing digital services.

First Pillar – Solar Energy: This pillar includes launching advanced solar power technologies in Dubai. One of DEWA’s key projects in this regard is the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the world’s largest single-site solar park, with a planned capacity of 5,000MW by 2030. The solar park supports the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 to produce 75% of Dubai’s total power output from clean energy sources.

Second Pillar – Energy Storage: Digital DEWA seeks to operate a renewable energy network using innovative energy storage technologies.

Third Pillar – Artificial Intelligence: to make Dubai the first city to provide AI-based electricity and water services. In line with this, DEWA launched Rammas. Through Rammas, DEWA is expanding its use of AI to all its operations. Via this pillar, DEWA will deploy machine learning to augment customer experience, support employee services and productivity enhancement, and optimise core grid operations.

Fourth Pillar – Digital Services: Digital DEWA will expand its digital services through Data Hub Integrated Solutions (Moro) and its strategic vision to be the most preferred choice for the public and private sectors in the UAE and the region in terms of data storage and cloud-based digital service management. This enhances the integration of institutional operations, monitoring operations, providing the best suggestions for decision making. This pillar also includes launching Digital X and Infra X companies, owned by DEWA.

Smart response for technical notifications of electricity and water

The Smart Response Initiative, available in 5 languages, aims to provide customers with the needed tools to improve the availability of supply, as well as enhancing customer experience in terms of reporting electricity and water technical interruptions.

It also helps resolve those interruptions through simplifying and enhancing reporting of interruptions, and to follow-up on these requests. The service enables customers to do self-diagnosis using DEWA’s smart app and increase the response rate using AI, GIS (Geographic Information Systems), Virtual Reality, and automated distribution of tasks.

The service also reduces the number of steps to fix interruptions from 10 steps to 1. Some customers can resolve these issues on their own – this has reduced field visits of DEWA’s technical teams to 56%. The service also saved 43% of the time needed to fix interruptions, increasing service quality up to 93%.

High water usage alert

The initiative has also yielded positive results for the environment and customers, saving customers AED 17 million annually and 300 million gallons of water.

The High-Water Usage Alert initiative helps customers discover possible leaks in their water connections, after the meter.

The system sends instant notifications to the customer if there is an unusual increase in consumption, to check the internal connections and repair any leaks with the help of a specialised technician.

This contributes to reducing incurred costs by limiting water wastage. The initiative reduces the ‘Recovery Average Time’ goal of minor notifications from 3 hours to 2 hours, and the major notifications from 6 hours to 4 hours. This has enhanced the proactive alert system of smart meters.

Smart adoption of DEWA’s services reached 93.3%

DEWA is one of the first government organisations to provide all its services through smart channels. Smart adoption of DEWA’s services reached 93.3% in 2019. DEWA provides all its services around the clock through several channels and smart platforms, as per the highest standards of availability, reliability, and efficiency. DEWA provides all its services through its website and smart app.

DEWA’s data security centre strives to limit potential electronic risks by monitoring services and technical assets of DEWA proactively. Using AI, the centre uses different techniques, through which it can verify security risks, reduce the time needed to resolve them, and enable data to detect and limit security threats