DEWA’s smart grid programme is a staged upgrade that adds automated decision-making and interoperability to Dubai’s electricity and water networks, backed by AED 7 billion (US$1.9 billion at the dirham’s fixed US dollar rate) of investment up to 2035, as DEWA confirmed in its February 2025 reliability announcement. According to the Government of Dubai Media Office, DEWA developed its first Smart Grid Strategy in 2014 and launched an updated strategy in 2021 that runs to 2035.
The programme uses technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. One of its main systems is the Automatic Smart Grid Restoration System, which DEWA describes as the first of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa. It works around the clock without human intervention, finding faults, isolating them and restoring supply automatically.
DEWA credits the smart grid with its 2024 reliability record. It points to more efficient transmission and distribution, lower losses and better load management. Figure 1 sets out the main parts of the programme and the figures DEWA reports for each.
Figure 1. The main parts of DEWA’s smart grid
DEWA has completed the rollout: in an April 2024 release, it reported that every active electricity and water meter in Dubai had been upgraded to a smart meter, with the total reaching 2.2 million at the end of 2023.
The rollout was already well advanced a year earlier. By the end of March 2023, DEWA had installed 2,140,740 smart meters, 1,129,816 for electricity and 1,010,924 for water, according to its first quarter 2023 results. Table 1 shows the split and the increase over the previous quarter.
In July 2024, DEWA announced 100% smart water meter installation, with over one million water meters in place by the start of June 2024. In the same announcement, DEWA credited its investment in new water systems with cutting water network losses from 7.06% to 4.6% between the start of 2018 and the end of 2023.
Table 1: Smart meters installed by DEWA in Dubai, end of March 2023
DEWA’s Smart Meters Analysis and Diagnosis Centre reads the meters remotely every 15 minutes. Customers can follow their own consumption online and find leaks sooner, as DEWA’s chief executive explained:
For 2024, DEWA reports electricity losses of 2%, customer minutes lost of 0.94 minutes and water network losses of 4.5%. These are the three figures in this article’s title. For 2025 it reports 2%, 0.82 minutes and 4.4%. Both years appear in the results table on DEWA’s results page, and Table 2 sets out the full series from 2012.
The Government of Dubai Media Office describes customer minutes lost as the total number of minutes during which customers experience a power outage. DEWA reports it as an average per customer per year, which makes it the same kind of measure as the System Average Interruption Duration Index used by many regulators to track how long the average customer is without power.
Between 2012 and 2025, customer minutes lost fell from 6.88 to 0.82 minutes, a reduction of 88%. DEWA’s February 2025 announcement put the fall to 0.94 minutes by 2024, and the fall from 2024 to 2025 alone was 12.8% (MCC calculation). Water network losses fell from 10.9% to 4.4%. Electricity losses fell from 3.5% to 2.0%, and most of that fall came between 2021 and 2023.
The series is not smooth every year. DEWA’s results table shows water losses rising from 5.1% in 2020 to 5.3% in 2021, and from 4.5% in 2022 to 4.6% in 2023.
Table 2. DEWA’s customer minutes lost, electricity losses and water network losses, 2012 to 2025
On DEWA’s figures, Dubai’s grid losses and power outages are well below every comparator it quotes. Most of those comparators, however, are DEWA’s own and come without a named source.
In its statement on the 2023 results, DEWA compares its 2% electricity losses with around 6% to 7% in Europe and the United States. Its current results page describes the same range as a global average. The US Energy Information Administration estimates that United States transmission and distribution losses averaged about 5% over 2018 to 2022. On that measure the gap with Dubai is about three percentage points. The World Bank’s world average, based on International Energy Agency data, was 6.9% in 2023 and 6.5% in 2024, which is consistent with DEWA’s global range. Table 3 sets these comparators side by side.
DEWA also compares its water losses with about 15% in North America, and its customer minutes lost with about 15 minutes at utilities it describes as leading in the European Union. Its statement on the 2023 results put it this way:
Table 3. DEWA’s grid losses and outage figures against the comparators quoted for them
Dubai’s reported losses have stayed below those of the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Germany and the United Arab Emirates as a whole in every year from 2013 to 2024 with data, on World Bank figures for other countries and DEWA’s own figures for Dubai. South Korea is the exception: its losses were within 0.2 percentage points of Dubai’s until 2021, and Dubai has been clearly lower only since 2022. Figure 2 shows the trend and Table 4 gives the figures.
Dubai’s figure stayed between 3.2% and 3.5% from 2013 to 2021, then fell to 2.2% in 2022 and 2.0% in 2023 and 2024. Over the same period, World Bank data shows several peers moving the other way. Losses rose in the United Kingdom from 7.4% to 9.9%, in Ireland from 7.8% to 8.2% and in Germany from 3.8% to 5.1%. They fell in the United States from 5.9% to 5.3% and in South Korea from 3.4% to 3.3%.
World Bank figures for the United Arab Emirates as a whole show 6.2% in 2013 and 4.3% in 2023, the latest year available. Dubai’s 2.0% in 2023 was less than half the national figure.
Figure 2 and Table 4 use the World Bank series on electric power transmission and distribution losses, based on International Energy Agency data, for every country, and the figures on DEWA’s results page for Dubai.
Figure 2. Electricity transmission and distribution losses, Dubai and selected countries, 2013 to 2024
Table 4. Electricity transmission and distribution losses, Dubai and selected countries, 2013 to 2024
No, not strictly. Loss and reliability figures depend on how each utility defines and measures them, so the comparisons above show direction rather than a ranking.
Loss figures depend on where the system boundary is drawn, for example whether losses in substations are included. They also depend on the design of the network, the data available and the climate. Customer minutes lost depends on which power outages are counted. In the United States, for example, the Energy Information Administration reported an average of 284 minutes of interruption per customer in 2019 including major events, but 92 minutes excluding them.
European regulators make the same point about grid losses. The Council of European Energy Regulators found distribution losses ranging from 1.95% to 22.63% across the countries it reviewed for 2022, and says that harmonised definitions separating technical from non-technical losses would improve benchmarking, adding that smart meters can help reduce the non-technical kind.
The World Bank series in Figure 2 counts theft as part of losses and measures losses as a share of total output. DEWA’s results page does not state its own definition.
Network design matters in Dubai’s case. DEWA’s review of its 2022 network reports 37,541 km of underground distribution cable and 713 km of overhead distribution line at the end of 2022. That puts 98% of the distribution network underground (MCC calculation). Underground cable is less exposed to weather and accidental damage than overhead line, which supports reliability.
The figures therefore show a strong trend within Dubai. They are not a like-for-like league table.
The two main risks are cyber attack and the variable output of solar generation, and DEWA is managing them with a dedicated cyber security lab and a pilot Virtual Power Plant.
Cyber security. A digital grid depends on secure data and control systems. In March 2023, DEWA and Moro Hub, a subsidiary of Digital DEWA, opened a Cyber Security Innovation Lab, together with the Waee Cybersecurity Centre and an Identity Intelligence Centre. The lab is used to research, design and test cyber security controls before DEWA deploys them.
Renewable integration. Solar output varies through the day, so the grid needs ways to balance it. In July 2024, DEWA completed a pilot Virtual Power Plant, the first in the region, and it is testing the plant on a digital twin of its network. The Virtual Power Plant links distributed energy resources such as solar panels, battery storage, electric vehicle chargers and flexible loads, and manages them as a single portfolio connected to the grid, as Gulf News reported when its first phase was completed.
Dubai now aims for 100% of its total production capacity to come from clean energy sources by 2050, under the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 and the Dubai Net Zero Carbon Emissions Strategy 2050, as DEWA stated in March 2023. That is higher than the 75% set for 2050 when the strategy was presented.
The strategy originally set targets of 7% by 2020, 25% by 2030 and 75% by 2050, as the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy set out in June 2016. In a March 2024 update on Dubai’s path to net zero, DEWA said it expected to beat the 2030 target and set 27% as its aim. Table 5 compares the original and current targets.
Table 5. Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 targets
Regulators and utilities can learn from the tools behind Dubai’s grid reliability results, but should not treat the figures as a benchmark until losses and customer minutes lost are measured on common definitions.
DEWA’s figures are self-reported. A regulator using them should ask how losses and customer minutes lost are defined, which interruptions are excluded, and how the figures are checked.
The improvement is large and sustained. Customer minutes lost fell by 88% between 2012 and 2025 (Table 2), over the same years in which DEWA moved to universal smart metering and automated fault restoration.
Network design explains part of the gap. A distribution network that is 98% underground starts from a different position from a largely overhead or rural one. For other utilities, the transferable lessons are the tools, such as automated restoration and near real-time meter data, more than the headline numbers.
I was delighted that MCC's work was completed on time, and within budget, helping us deliver important changes and improvements, to the benefit of our stakeholders. MCC's report is published on the CCC website.
I am delighted to recommend MCC Economics. Specifically, I worked closely with PJ, who helped us with our Nuclear and CCUS projects. PJ helped us develop new policies and answer questions from our stakeholders. His support helped us deliver important changes and improvements, to the benefit of our stakeholders.
MCC Economics has helped us better understand the most important issues for our stakeholders, including: charges, shareholder returns, debt payments and inflation impacts.
I am delighted to recommend PJ and his team at MCC Economics. We've been working together on National Policy Statements to help meet net zero targets for 2030 and 2050. We initially appointed MCC Economics to support us on offshore wind consultation analysis and have recently reappointed MCC Economics to undertake a larger consultation analysis role across all sectors, including hydrogen, CCUS and networks. I can confirm that PJ and his team have shown excellent spreadsheet skills, alongside very good project management, planning and analysis skills, helping us deliver important changes, and continuous improvements, to the benefit of our stakeholders.
I am delighted to recommend PJ and his team from MCC Economics. They helped us with our price controls for Heathrow airport and for NATS (En Route) plc (the air traffic services provider). Specifically, the MCC team helped us deliver important changes and improvements to our financial models and supporting policy documents, to the benefit of our stakeholders.
I am delighted to confirm that I worked with PJ on a retail project in 2015. The project helped stakeholders understand electricity costs and charges. Specifically, the project helped us explain to stakeholders, internally and externally, why electricity charges differed across the regions (GB, NI & Ireland). PJ was a key member on the project team, which helped deliver changes and improvements in the understanding of energy retail.
.png)
Evidence-based analysis for transparent, defensible, and effective decision-making.
© All rights reserved – MCC Economics 2026.
.jpg)
.jpg)
