Dubai Electricity and Water Authority
The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority is a public service infrastructure company that was founded on 1 January 1992 by Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum. It arose from the merger of the Dubai Electricity Company and the Dubai Water Department that had been operating independently until then. These organizations were established in 1959 by sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, former ruler of Dubai. The objective of the state-run company is making available to the people of Dubai an adequate and reliable supply of electricity and water.
As of end of 2017, DEWA employs a workforce of over 11,000 employees and provides 796,764 customers with electricity and 705,376 customers with water.
In 2017, DEWA had an installed capacity of 10,200 MW of electricity and 470 million imperial gallons of desalinated water per day.
After using conventional gas-fired power plants for most of its history, DEWA has recently started to add solar power to its energy mix. After installing an initial 13 MW solar plant at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in 2013, a further 200 MW were contracted from developer ACWA Power in January 2015. The latest addition to DEWA's solar portfolio will be an 800 MW solar power plant, which was started in the fall of 2015 and should be completed by 2020. DEWA plans a 250 MW pumped-storage hydroelectricity at Hatta using 880 million gallons of water 300 meter above a lower dam.
