Barcelona (Spain) XX December 2015.─ The international partners of the EU funded project, MED-SOLAR, are building in Lebanon three pilot photovoltaic plants within the framework of this initiative, whose main objective is the promotion and the implementation of innovative technologies, as well as know-how transfer in the field of solar energy, particularly PV systems, in the target countries: Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine.
The partners of the MED-SOLAR, in the framework of ENPI CBC Med Programme, have been in charge of the identification and selection of the beneficiaries of these PV plants in their respective countries.
The Lebanese partner of the project, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), selected the Lebanese Institute “Amal Educational Institution”, the Lebanese NGO “Emkan” and the Foundation “Rene Moawad – CAN”. Two of these PV plants are already built and ready for the commissioning. These institutions will have the benefit of PV plants with an implemented energy management system (EMS), which will provide different modes of operation according to the needs of the sites.
It is expected that these facilities will reduce the electricity cost of the centers and the use of diesel fuel due to the dependency of the electricity generators during the long ours or electricity cuts.
The project started in January 2013 and it will definitely expire at the end of December 2015. To date, the project brings together more than 900 stakeholders from different sectors including SMEs, technological centers, universities and policy makers with the common objective of boosting solar energy in the area.
Impact on the community
The MED-SOLAR project does not limit itself by implementing these pilot plants but also implementing a communication strategy with the objective of sustaining the project in a long term. In order to reach this goal, the project organized different workshops, the last one in the framework of the Beirut Energy Forum with more than 100
participants with the goal to call the local industry together with international experts to find the best solution for the market challenges.
Furthermore, on 7th September 2015, a training event with more than 80 attendees was held in Beirut gathering students, engineers and project managers to improve their technical skills through different modules about microgrid elements, PV power plants design, operation, construction and maintenance. Those modules were taught by partners of the project so that the audience took advantage of their wide experience and real approach to the market.
Common challenges
Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine face the same specific energy reality: the increase in the energy price and the weakness of the electrical grid (impossibility of having increase in the power supply, interruptions, etc.) which reduced the security of supply in critical facilities such as hospital and schools as well as the proper development of the small and medium size industries.
The partners of the target countries are: The National Center for Research and Development (NCRD, Jordan), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, Lebanon), and the Energy
Research Centre (ERC, Palestine), the coordinator Trama TecnoAmbiental (TTA, Spain), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, (UPC, Spain) and Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA, France), have collaborated to define the functionalities and technical specifications of the PV plants and to benchmark the R&D needs.