Comment by Riaz Haq on January 4, 2012 at 10:06am

Solar energy lights up rural schools in Pakistan, according to Earth Techling:

Pakistan starts 2012 on a slightly brighter note after a year of recovering from the worst floods in the country’s history in 2010 (while continuing to endure high levels of terrorism-related violence). As part of the effort to rebuild, sunny days and solar panels and multipurpose lights are providing reliable and much needed electricity for schools and rural areas of Pakistan that have been without electricity since the floods.

Plan International Pakistan and the Punjab education department have rehabilitated nearly 400 schools destroyed by floods, and implemented solar power in 250 schools that did not have electricity. Funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the project piloted the first use of solar technology in the UK’s disaster response. In addition to the solar panel installation, the project also provided water and sanitation, school furniture, school paper, schoolbags and uniforms, sports equipment and health education for 54,000 primary school children.

In addition to powering up the schools, aid from the U.K.’s DFID also provided multipurpose solar light units to people across rural southern Pakistan who have been without power since the floods and were relying on candles, kerosene oil and rechargeable flashlights for light. The solar unites provide free and sustainable light for up to 10 hours after charged and last up to five years. But beyond providing light, the units can also be used to recharge mobile phones, which play a critical role in helping displaced families and communities stay connected in areas where landline phones are rare.

Marvi, a woman living in southern Pakistan with her seven children, explained to aid officials how the solar units were benefiting her family: “I use the solar light for cooking at night,” she explains. “We save money because we had to buy candles and kerosene before. We also use it to charge our mobile phones.”

http://www.earthtechling.com/2012/01/pakistan-lights-up-new-year-wi...

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 4, 2012 at 10:12pm

Conergy will plan and supply Pakistan’s biggest solar-power plant as the country seeks to increase access to electricity, reports Bloomberg:

The 50-megawatt project at Bahawalpur in the Cholistan region is owned by DACC Power Generation Co. and the Pakistani government and will supply 30,500 households with electricity, Conergy said today in an e-mailed statement.

Total investment will probably be about $170 million to $190 million, with Conergy’s share at about 60 million euros ($75 million) to 70 million euros, said Antje Stephan, a Conergy spokeswoman.

The government is seeking to spur investment, create jobs and expand access to power in a country where some areas can be without energy for as long as 18 hours a day, Conergy said. The company, working with developer Ensunt Inc., will supply 210,000 modules and 140 inverters, the Hamburg-based manufacturer said.

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-04/conergy-agrees-to-suppl...

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 18, 2013 at 10:35pm

Here's an ET report on German solar panel manufacturing investment in Pakistan:

FAISALABAD:

German renewable energy company CAE plans to invest more than €100 million (Rs12.9 billion) in setting up the first solar panel manufacturing facility in Pakistan, and the second of its kind in Asia.

In an exclusive interview with The Express Tribune, Shahzada Khurram, the only Pakistani director of the company, shared its plans of becoming a leading supplier of renewable energy equipment in the country. “Pakistan is going through one of the worst energy crises, and it is time to think about renewable energy as a way to make good money in the sector,” said Khurram.

CAE, based in Germany, is owned by four partners, one of whom is Khurram. The other three are Renier Kertess (German), Anton Josef Hotz (Swiss), and Luigi Tassell (Italian). Khurram met them during his time as a student in Germany and Mexico. Khurram himself is from a family that has a background in textile manufacturing.

CAE plans to introduce a type of solar panel that has not been used in Pakistan before and is not manufactured anywhere else in Asia except one place in China. It will build a factory in Faisalabad on land that has been given to it by the University of Agriculture Faisalabad. In exchange, the university gets a 10% share in the company’s Pakistani subsidiary. Manufacturing is expected to start by the end of the year.

Solar energy prices are rapidly becoming more competitive with thermal energy sources. Several global experts believe that 2013 will be the year that solar energy becomes economically viable even without any government subsidies.

The problem with solar panels in Pakistan has hitherto been the fact that the upfront set-up cost is beyond the reach of most customers, even though the costs thereafter are miniscule. To smooth out that the cost curve, CAE has partnered with Faysal Bank and Meezan Bank to offer consumer financing options for people looking to install solar panels in their homes and offices. CAE claims it will offer a 25-year warranty for its products, allowing its customers to get extended time periods on their loans, which will reduce monthly payments.

“We are aiming to make sure that any person who installs the house solar system will have monthly instalments equal to their current monthly electricity bill,” said Khurram. Given the fact that grid electricity in Pakistan is cheap, but unreliable, it is likely that many will find that proposition highly tempting....

http://tribune.com.pk/story/491194/renewable-energy-german-firm-to-...

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 1, 2013 at 9:15pm

Here's an Express Tribune report on 300 MW solar power project in Pakistan:

QUETTA:

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the Balochistan government and CK Solar Korea for installing a 300 MW solar power plant near Quetta, Provincial Secretary Energy Fuad Hashim Rabbani said on Saturday.

The project will cost around $900 million and will be completed by 2016, he said, while addressing the media.

Rabbani said the government has procured 1,500 acres of land in Khuchlak and Pishin on lease. “This project will help overcome the shortfall of electricity in Balochistan,” he added.

The project will provide green energy particularly in areas where is no conventional electricity option, the energy secretary said.

“Currently, the local population of targeted areas are using kerosene lanterns, which is hazardous to the health and non-economical due to the intermittent price hike,” he remarked.

He said that electricity to medical facilities such as hospitals, Basic Health Units and installation of solar street lights were amongst major benefits of the project.

“The government is planning to install 20 solar powered water pumps in 10 districts of Balochistan for water supply schemes,” Rabbani said.

Responding to a question, he conceded that farmers were suffering due to long hours of load-shedding and assured that steps would be taken to provide electricity to the farmers.

He said that work on Loralai-DG Khan 220 KV and Dadu-Khuzdar 220 KV power supply lines would be completed next year.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/529000/solar-power-plant-balochistan-go...

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 7, 2013 at 8:55am

Here's a CleanTechnica story on 500MW solar power plant in Cholistan desert in Pakistan:

The chief minister of the Punjab government in Pakistan has just announced plans for the development of a 500 MW solar energy project in the Cholistan region — a project that will apparently be completed with the aid of the Canadian government.

While much remains unknown about the project, a few details are known — the project deal involves the Canadian government, the project will be completed in two phases, it’s not clear exactly how the Canadians will be involved, and the first phase will see 200 MW of capacity go online before the second phase is finished. The chief minister also announced plans for a 1 GW electricity generation scheme at the same press conference

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/12/500-mw-solar-energy-project-dev...

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 26, 2014 at 8:52am

Here's a PV magazine story on solar plants pipeline in Pakistan:

The country currently has 22 individual solar PV projects under different stages of development, according to Pakistan's Alternative Energy Development Board.

Pakistan is on course to add 772 MW of solar power to its national grid by 2016, according to figures released by the country's Alternative Energy Development Board (AEEDB).

There are currently 22 individual solar power projects either under construction or at various stages of development across Pakistan, with a number of these projects awaiting an agreement on a national FIT – details of which the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) finally announced in late January after months of delays.

NEPRA has now published its final FIT incentives for PV projects between 1 MW and 100 MW. In the north of Pakistan the FIT will be set at $0.18 cents per kWh for an initial ten-year period, halving after that time to just $0.09 cents per kWh for the next 15 years.

In Pakistan's southern regions, the FIT incentive comes in a little more generously, at $0.19 cents per kWh for the first ten years, but falling to below $0.09 cents per kWh thereafter.

In 2013, the AEDB recommended a FIT level of approximately $0.27 cents per kWh nationwide, but NEPRA has calculated a lower rate on the basis of Pakistan's current PV pipeline.

AEDB has also revealed that it is pursuing a number of renewable energy projects for the country’s national grid, and has pledged its backing to the solar industry and the wind industry – the latter of which has an estimated 150 MW pipeline in the offing.

For solar, AEDB is set to embark on a campaign to promote the installation of residential rooftop PV systems designed for self-consumption. Currently, Pakistan has no building or licensing restrictions on these types of installations.

Read more: http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/pipeline-of-pv-proj...

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 20, 2014 at 7:59am

Here's an AFP story on a planned giant solar park in Pakistan's Cholistan desert in Punjab:

BADAIWANI WALA: For years Pakistanis have sweated and cursed through summer power cuts, but now the government plans to harness the sun's ferocious heat to help tackle the country's chronic energy crisis.

In a corner of the Cholistan desert in Punjab province, power transmission lines, water pipes and a pristine new road cross 10,000 acres of parched, sandy land.

The provincial government has spent $5 million to put in place the infrastructure as it seeks to transform the desolate area into one of the world's largest solar power parks, capable one day of generating up to 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

The desert park in Bahawalpur district is the latest scheme to tackle the rolling blackouts which have inflicted misery on people and strangled economic growth.

Temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius in the country's centre in June and July, sending demand for electricity soaring and leaving a shortfall of around 4,000 MW.

“In phase one, a pilot project producing 100 MW of electricity will hopefully be completed by the end of this year,” Imran Sikandar Baluch, head of the Bahawalpur district administration, told AFP.

“After completion of the first 100 MW project, the government will invite investors to invest here for the 1,000 megawatts.”

A 'river' of solar panels

Engineers and labourers are working in the desert under the scorching sun to complete the boundary wall, with authorities keen to begin generating solar electricity by November.

“If you come here after one and a half years, you will see a river of (solar) panels, residential buildings and offices -- it will be a new world,”said site engineer Muhammad Sajid, gesturing to the desert.

Besides solar, Pakistan is also trying to tap its unexploited coal reserves -- which lie in another area of the same desert, in Sindh province.

In January Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inaugurated construction on a $1.6 billion coal plant in the town of Thar, in Sindh.

Work has also begun on a pilot 660 megawatt coal-fired plant in Gadani, a small town on the Arabian Sea.

Another 600 megawatt coal plant has also been given the go-ahead in the southern city of Jamshoro.

But while coal may offer a short-term fix to the energy crisis, authorities are keen to move to cleaner electricity in the long run.

“We need energy badly and we need clean energy, this is a sustainable solution for years to come,” said Baloch.

“Pakistan is a place where you have a lot of solar potential. In Bahawalpur, with very little rain and a lot of sunshine, it makes the project feasible and more economical,” he said.

Clean energy

Baloch believes that the new solar park will make Pakistan a leader in that energy in the region. The initial pilot project is a government scheme but private investors are also taking an interest.

Raja Waqar of Islamabad-based Safe Solar Power is among them. His company plans to invest $10 million to build a 10 MW project in the new park.

“The government has allotted us land over here. Infrastructure, the transmission line and road are available here, that is why we are investing,”Waqar told AFP.

A million dollars per MW is a sizeable investment but Waqar said the company expected to reap returns on it over at least the next decade, and others were keen to get on board.

“There are up to 20 companies who are investing in this park and their projects are in the pipeline,” he said. “Some of them are working on 50 MW, some on 10 and others on 20.”But not everyone is so upbeat about the project.....

http://www.dawn.com/news/1101141/pakistan-plans-huge-desert-solar-p...

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 13, 2014 at 10:26pm

Global Renewable Energy Mapping Program Gets Underway in Pakistan with First Solar Measurement Station

The first of nine automated solar measuring stations in Pakistan was inaugurated at the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park in Bahawalpur in October 2014
The nine stations will transmit daily reports on 10 minute average values for solar radiation levels, temperature, air pressure and wind speed, with the data made publicly available
Installation will soon be followed by 15 wind measurement stations in Pakistan, and similar measurement campaigns in eleven other countries

Pakistan has tremendous potential for harnessing wind, solar, biomass and other renewable energy resources to help reduce power cuts and improve access to modern energy services. But the country lacks the high quality resource data at a national scale that is needed to take full advantage of these sources of clean energy.

For the past year, the World Bank and Pakistan’s Alternative Energy Development Board have been working together to map renewable energy resources across the entire country. The project, supported by the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), will measure Pakistan’s potential for wind, solar and biomass energy by using ground-based data collection, GIS analysis, and geospatial planning. It is part of a broader Renewable Energy Resource Mapping initiative covering 12 countries.

Concluding the first phase of the project, initial maps of solar and wind potential for Pakistan were presented to the government and other stakeholders at an October 15 workshop in Islamabad. The result of months of computer-intensive modeling, these maps represent a significant improvement over previous efforts due to computational advances over the last decade. The maps are based on satellite data and global atmospheric models covering a 10 year period, and can be used to estimate the likely solar or wind potential at any point in the country.

However, to get to the level of confidence required by commercial developers, these modeling results must be compared against actual solar and wind measurements taken from ground-based stations.

A major part of the ESMAP renewable energy mapping initiative is to collect ground-based measurement data for a period of up to two years. This data is then used to improve the models, leading to the production of solar and wind atlases with a margin of error of as low as 5 percent. These in turn can be used by governments to set tariffs and guide the strategic development of renewable energy, and by commercial developers to carry out feasibility studies, leading to development of solar and wind power plants.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/11/12/global-wbg-rene... 

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 8, 2014 at 4:20pm

JA Solar has delivered PV panels for a 100MW solar project in Punjab, Pakistan.
It did not reveal the terms of the deal.

The modules will be installed at a 500-acre site at the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park in Bahawalpur.

“The harsh and arid climate in Pakistan is a great challenge for our solar modules,” said JA Solar chief operations officer Yong Liu in an online statement.

Quaid-e-Azam — a major project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor development programme — is the first utility-scale PV installation in Pakistan.

The project — a venture between the Punjab provincial government, Bank of Punjab and Chinese power-transformer specialist Tebian Electric Apparatus (TBEA) — will be scaled up to 1GW by 2016.

http://www.rechargenews.com/solar/1385964/JA-Solar-ships-100MW-to-P...

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 6, 2015 at 9:50am

ISLAMABAD (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Amid a worsening energy crisis, Pakistan has approved the use of grid-connected solar energy, rooftop solar installations and mortgage financing for home solar panels to boost uptake of clean energy in the country.

The government has also reversed course and eliminated a 32.5 percent tax imposed on imported solar equipment in the country's 2014-2015 budget. The reversal aims to bring down the cost of installing solar panels.

The approval of net-metering – which allows solar panel purchasers to sell power they produce to the national grid - is a major breakthrough that could spur use of solar energy and help Pakistan's government cut power shortages in the long run, said Asjad Imtiaz Ali, chief executive officer of the Alternative Energy Development Board, a public organization.

"The initiative will help scale up demand for solar energy acrossPakistan,” he said, “and we hope the increased demand will also result in sufficient decreases in the price of solar equipment.”

Ali said the government decided to cut newly imposed taxes on the import of solar panels following pressure from business owners, the public and media.

And the decision to allow solar generators to sell their excess generating capacity means “consumers can now install rooftop solar systems and sell the extra energy to the national grid,” he said.

Currently, Pakistan's rural areas face blackouts of over 11 hours a day while urban areas suffer up to eight hours of daily power cuts. The total power shortfall stands around 6,000 megawatts.

Safeer Hussain, a registrar at the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority, said consumers who intend to sell solar-generated electric power to a distribution company would need to register with his authority.

“Net-metering is a sophisticated system and the applicant would be responsible for the installation of the equipment used for interconnection,” he said.

HOW IT WORKS

Net-metering is a billing mechanism that credits solar energy system owners for the electricity they add to the national grid.

If a solar household uses more grid power than it supplies to the grid from its solar panels, it would still be billed each month for that excess power. But if it supplies more electricity than it uses in a month, then it will receive a credit against future bills or, be paid for the power on an annual basis, Hussain said.

"The tariff applicable for purchase of electricity from the consumer will be the same at which he has been billed by the company for electric power,” he said.

Nauman Khan, one panel importer and chief executive officer of Grace Solar Pakistan, said the changes could triple his solar imports in 2015.

Pakistan’s private sector imported 350 megawatts of solar panels in 2013 but that dropped to 128 megawatts in 2014 after the government imposed taxes on import of the panels, he said.

"The tax exemptions and other initiatives to boost clean energy are a welcome move by the government,” he said. “We hope the private sector would import around 800 megawatts of solar panels in 2015 to meet the demand.”

Net-metering will not only help consumers get uninterrupted power and energy credits through the year but also help the government bridge its power shortfall, he said.

Khan and the heads of two other solar companies plan to install rooftop solar on 100,000 homes in Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi and Islamabad in next two to three years, with Bank Alfalah Limited, a private bank, offering financing to buyers.

FUNDING TO BUY PANELS

The State Bank of Pakistan and the Alternative Energy Development Board have recently allowed the bank for the first time to finance rooftop solar installation with home mortgages.

Fariha Mir, a senior manager at Bank Alfalah, said the financing up to five million rupees (around $50,000) for rooftop solar installation would be launched in the first quarter of 2015 under the banner “Green Market.”

"It's our social responsibility to create awareness about clean energy and provide loans for it on easy installments to our customers,” she said.

Mir said the bank would give loans to customers who want to convert their homes to solar energy. The program, which will allow buyers to borrow against their home’s value, will continue for five years, she said.

"The loan would be especially useful for people who otherwise can't afford rooftop solar installation,” she said, adding the interest rate on the solar financing would also be comparatively low.

Qamar-uz-Zaman, an expert on climate change with Lead Pakistan, a non-profit organization in Islamabad, predicted net-metering and private sector financing for solar installation would revolutionize the use of renewable energy in Pakistan, as it has done for many other developed and developing countries.

"Pakistan can cut carbon emissions to a significant extent and access international climate financing by promoting solar energy, besides overcoming its energy crisis,” he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/06/us-pakistan-solar-idUSKBN...

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