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Eco City In The Desert
April 28 2011
A new eco city has been built and residents live with driverless electric cars, shaded streets cooled by a huge wind tower and a green monitoring system to determine their energy use.
Phase one of the eco city of Masdar was started in 2006. It is near Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and it has cost $1.4bn so far. It consists of six main buildings, one street, 101 small apartments, a large electronic library, and the Masdar Institute, which has an organic food shop and 10 driverless electric cars on campus.
A 45-metre Teflon-coated wind tower shows residents how much energy the community is using; argon gas insulates the rammed earth and steel walls, solar air-conditioning and desalination plants are being tested, as are thermal energy and "beam down" solar plants that use mirrors to concentrate the sun and heat water to generate electricity.
Phase two is due to be finished this year and will add 222 more apartments, and more streets and shops.
The monitors in the buildings analyse every human and mechanical action requiring electricity. Every machine the students use, every fridge door they open, or light they leave on, is recorded via an intelligent digital grid that senses and controls energy use and lets the power provider control temperature and water centrally. Showers turn off after a few minutes, sensors switch on fridges and lights.
The power to centrally control energy may become the norm as computerised smart grids are rolled out in Europe and the US. Fred Moavenzadeh, head of the Masdar institute says "The shock of having to conserve energy is part of the Masdar human experiment”. According to their tweets, people living in the city say they quickly get used to the technology
There are changes being made as the experiment continues, and the world-wide recession hits. The idea for covering all roofs with solar panels was found to be more costly than a centralised power plant, but the photovoltaic panels outside the city are proving less efficient than expected because of dust storms and haze, cutting the energy available from solar radiation by 30%. It is also labour inefficient as the panels must be cleaned by hand.
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