1,400 robots clean sand from a solar power plant in the UAE

Noor Abu Dhabi is one of the largest solar power plants located in the United Arab Emirates. According to the investor, this is a promising economic project, as the city of Suwayhan is known for having the highest level of solar radiation in all the Arab Emirates. 

Noor Abu Dhabi cost $872 million, primarily because of its record-breaking timeframe – it took just two years to build. The station became fully operational in 2019 and its capacity (1.2 Gigawatts) is enough to supply 90,000 homes in Abu Dhabi with electricity. The chosen desert location is ideal for the solar panels, but they have recently started to suffer increasingly from sandstorms (sand deposits block the panels and reduce their power and efficiency). 

“When we started planning the project, panel contamination was one of the biggest concerns with this kind of technology in the middle of the desert. So, we implemented a dry-cleaning system. We use robotic systems that clean 3.3 million panels twice a day,” said Abdulla Al Qayoumi. 

Engineers have developed and implemented a dry-cleaning system – more than 1,400 robots clean each panel twice a day. The robots are capable of travelling approximately 1,600 kilometres per cleaning cycle. 

Importantly, the increased share of energy from the Noor Abu Dhabi plant has significantly reduced the consumption of natural gas in power generation, resulting in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by 1 million tonnes per year. 

In 2021, the United Arab Emirates stated its goals to arrive at carbon neutrality by 2050, so the focus is on introducing specifically clean energy sources.

Unsplash / Zbynek Burival / Jason Leung