Abu Dhabi turns to rooftops for next solar power wave

For more than a decade, the Gulf’s clean-energy ambitions have been etched into the desert with vast solar parks that rank among the world’s largest and cheapest producers of electricity.

Left virtually untouched, however, are the region’s sun-soaked rooftops. From the UAE’s soaring corporate towers to the high-end villas in its residential neighborhoods, rooftop installations provide less than 1% of the nation’s solar capacity compared to more than 40% globally. 

That is about to change – in part because wartime attacks from Iran have made people conscious of rising energy and fuel costs and fearful of the prospect of extended blackouts. A drone attack on the weekend targeted the Barakah nuclear power plant, which supplies about 25% of the country’s power.

“The number of inquiries has increased several times over,” Vladimir Mlynchik, Co-Founder of Abu Dhabi-based solar company Volts Energy, told The Circuit. “People want to feel safe. They want to ensure that, no matter what happens around them, their homes will have electricity 24/7.” 

Under a new set of policies being rolled out this year by Abu Dhabi’s Department of Energy, property owners are being encouraged to install solar panels and battery systems to generate electricity for their own use. The changes, initiated before the war, are aimed at reducing peak pressures on the grid and improving electricity management across the emirate.

In turn, solar businesses such as Volts see a growing market among homeowners who want to turn their villas into virtual power plants – running everything from air conditioning systems to electric cars off panels installed on their rooftops.

One Emirati client has become almost fully self-sufficient, powering two electric vehicles and an integrated smart home system off his family’s home grid.

“He is a fairly advanced user – he even mines Bitcoin at home,”  Mlynchik said. “While the villa is not ultra-luxury, he truly believes in the future…  He enjoys the experience.”

The UAE has invested extensively in solar projects, including Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park and Abu Dhabi’s Al Dhafra Solar Power Plant, which rank among the biggest in the world. Its green energy giant Masdar, which is backed by Mubadala, ADNOC and national energy company TAQA, is building the world’s first “round the clock” gigascale project in Abu Dhabi. Masdar has also deployed tens of billions for international projects, recently going on a buying spree in Europe.

It is surprising, therefore, that the country’s rooftops have remained relatively untapped. 

Analysis by London consulting firm Knight Frank of more than 266,000 buildings across Abu Dhabi identified almost 43 square kilometers (16.5 square miles) of usable rooftop space – equivalent to 6,000 soccer fields. A similar rooftop inventory for Riyadh revealed 158.2 square kilometers of usable space.

“I was astonished by what we found. I really didn’t expect it to be quite so impactful,” Wesley Thomson, Knight Frank’s Head of Environmental, Social and Governance for the Middle East and Africa, told The Circuit.

Energy has long been plentiful and cheap in the oil-rich Gulf states, which, alongside a lack of regulatory clarity or incentives, has left them lagging the world in rooftop installations, despite championing enormous utility-scale solar farms.

Even with rooftops, the economics favor larger installations, Thomson said. Systems exceeding 10,000 square meters can achieve generation costs of around 0.08 AED per kilowatt hour, close to utility-scale solar park benchmarks in the UAE, which are already among the cheapest in the world. In Riyadh, Knight Frank’s modeling suggests large commercial rooftops could recover installation costs in seven years. 

While reliable projections are hard to come by, a high-level estimate based on the size of usable rooftop space could imply a combined capital deployment opportunity in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh of $12 billion to $30 billion, Thomson said.

Chinese manufacturers – which dominate roughly 80% of global panel production, led by JinkoSolar, LONGi and Trina Solar – stand to be the primary beneficiaries of any surge in rooftop solar installations in the region. But investment opportunities extend beyond manufacturing panels.

Local companies that have carved out niches in the UAE include Sharaf DG Energy, which offers residential solar packaged with financing options, and ALEC Energy, a division of ALEC Engineering and Contracting, owned by The Investment Corporation of Dubai, which has installed solar systems at sites including Yas Water World in Abu Dhabi and Wynn Al Marjan Resort in Ras Al Khaimah.

Volts, which was supported by Masdar City’s Catalyst accelerator, had originally planned to build a lithium-ion battery cell gigafactory in Abu Dhabi, before realizing that such a project could not compete with Chinese firms.

Mlynchik said the company decided to shift its focus to value-added products and is now designing energy storage systems that target Dubai and Abu Dhabi’s high-end villas, using high-quality Chinese battery cells. 

Its flagship system delivers 50 kW of power with storage capacity ranging from 70 to 120 kWh, enough to easily meet the power needs of a large compound and store several days’ supply of energy. 

Volts is also working with off-grid glamping sites – popular desert retreats with upscaled tent accommodation – where solar panels and small wind turbines preserve the peace and quiet of the wilderness. “If a diesel generator is rattling in the background, it ruins the entire experience,” Mlynchik said.

Another factor is the shift towards electric vehicles, which goes hand in hand with the region’s embrace of autonomous transport systems. 

Knight Frank’s Thomson sees a future where the UAE embraces the kind of transformation happening in places like California, where a home becomes a “virtual power plant,” generating its own power to run electrified systems and EVs, as well as feeding back into the grid.

“We’re not quite there yet … but what this policy does is it opens the door to that potential. And it couldn’t be more timely,” he said.