Tawanai

Pakistan Ministry of Water and Power would provide electricity to around 100 villages through solar energy during this year as part of its programme to ensure light in every village of the country. Electrification through Renewable Energy Technologies in remote and off-grid villages of country is the prime focus of the government which has initiated projects not only to overcome power shortage but also to electrify the remotest parts, said an official at the Ministry.

The official said a project has already been approved to electrify 400 remote villages of Sindh and Balochistan through solar energy. Around 49 villages (3000 households) have been electrified in district Tharparker using solar energy through government own funds.

The funds for remaining work in Sindh and the projects in Balochistan are being negotiated with the donors and are expected to be initiated during this year. Moreover, 100 Solar Home Systems in three villages of district Dera Bugti, 119 Solar Home Systems in 10 villages of Deh Tiko Baran district Jamshoro, Sindh and 200 Solar Home Systems in 16 Villages of district Khuzdar, Balochistan are also being installed through which thousands of people would be facilitated.

The official said in view of the electricity crises in the country the government has given a serious thought to both short and long-term measures. Public sector hydro plants with generation capacity of 347 MW will be added to the system at a cost of US $500 million and 1,700 MW of high efficiency public sector thermal generation would start generation between end 2010 and upto 2012. The outlay for these projects is estimated as US $1.5 billion.

Read more…

Consumers, Electricity, Energy, Pakistan, Renewable Energy, Solar, power

Via TelecomPk.net

In 2008 I wrote about VNL and its efforts to create low power base stations. Here’s an update about their work which appeared at Technology Review.

An Indian telecom company is deploying simple cell phone base stations that need as little as 50 watts of solar-provided power. It will soon announce plans to sell the equipment in Africa, expanding cell phone access to new ranks of rural villagers who live far from electricity supplies.

Over the past year, VNL, based in Haryana, India, has reengineered the traditional technology of the dominant cellular standard, called GSM, in order to create base stations that only require between 50 and 150 watts of power, supplied by a solar-charged battery. The components can be assembled and booted up by two people and mounted on a rooftop in six hours.

One such station–dubbed a “village station”–can handle hundreds of users. Groups of such village stations feed signals to a required larger VNL base station within five kilometers. In turn that larger station, which is also solar-powered, relays signals to the main network. The village station can turn a profit even if customers spend on average only $2 a month on the service, instead of the $6 required to make traditional systems cost-effective, the company says.

“We’ve scaled down the cost, the energy, and the equipment so that almost anybody can deploy it,” says Rajiv Mehrotra, VNL’s CEO. “It lends itself to many business models that can serve the bottom of the pyramid,” a reference to the roughly 1.5 billion rural people who do not have access to electricity grids around the world.

To date, some 50 VNL base stations have been installed in the Indian state of Rajasthan, introducing thousands of people to cell phone service for the first time. An African rollout is imminent, the company says, without elaborating. The initial batch of 50 stations support voice and data transmission–but not initially text-messaging, a decision mainly based on the fact that many new users may not be able to read or write.

Besides enabling basic communication, cell phones can provide enormous financial opportunities for rural people, especially if those people adopt services that provide banking and lending via cell phone. More than half of India’s 1.1 billion people lack any access to basic financial services, and instead pay usurious rates to local loan sharks. Furthermore, while microlending can lift people from poverty, only about 150 million people worldwide use such services. Expanded cell networks, together with banking programs geared to the rural poor, could change all of that.

Clean Technology, Consumers, Innovation

Associate Press of Pakistan reports that the Japanese government has agreed to provide a grant of Yen 480,000,000 (US $5.4 million) to Pakistan for “Introduction of Clean Energy by Solar Electricity Generation System” programme. An agreement to this effect was signed here on Thursday by Secretary, Economic Affairs Division, Sibtain Fazal Halim and Ambassador of Japan in Pakistan, Chihiro Atsumi on behalf of their respective governments.

Among others, Head of Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA), also witnessed the signing ceremony. Under the Clean Energy Initiative, two on-grid solar power generation systems (100 KW each) will be installed under grant-aid through JICA, one at Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) and other at roof of Planning Commission’s building.

The project will promote clean energy utilisation and will help achieve emission reduction by installing the new system that would be connected to the national grid. The system is expected to reduce the gas emission, by replacing the part of electric power generated by fossil fuel and contribute to the climate change policy of Pakistan.

This project is first of its kind in the country, which would set precedent as a role model of defining procedures and strategy at the level for on-grid solar power generation. It is expected to become an effective measure to overcome the energy shortage and a motive for utilising solar power, for which there is big scope with relatively less investment.

On the occasion Chihiro Atsumi said that Japan was concerned about the challenges caused by the climate change in Pakistan which has been resulting in receding glaciers and lack of rain fall. During the Copenhagen conference held last month, Japan has committed to reduce the carbon emission, and Pakistan and Japan would try to utilise the solar energy to achieve this goal.

On the occasion, Secretary EAD said that Government of Japan has deep and diversified relations with Pakistan adding that Japan was the biggest donor partner of Pakistan and continued its support in education, health, energy, environment and disaster management.

Japan has also helped in capacity building and institution building in Pakistan, the Secretary added. Speaking on the occasion, Pakistan Engineering Council, Chairperson Rukhsana Zuberi expressed the hope that the launch of this project and the awareness created through media could lead to the solutions of energy problems. This system is economically viable and will also help in income generation, she added.

Clean Technology, Consumers, Energy, Investment, Solar Japan, JICA, Pakistan Engineering Council

There are some new techniques which help to tap into natural gas reserves but there is public concern about damage to environment. A mounting backlash against a technique used in natural-gas drilling is threatening to slow development of huge gas fields.

The U.S. energy industry says there is enough untapped domestic natural gas to last a century—but getting to that gas requires injecting millions of gallons of water into the ground to crack open the dense rocks holding the deposits. The process, known as hydraulic fracturing, has turned gas deposits in shale formations into an energy bonanza.

The industry’s success has triggered increasing debate over whether the drilling methods cause damage to the environment.

Today, the industry estimates that 90% of all new gas wells are fractured. Shale—a dense, nonporous gas-bearing rock—won’t release its gas unless it is cracked open, and other types of formations also produce more gas when fractured. Easier, more porous formations, which don’t require fracturing, were tapped in earlier decades and have largely dried up.

As the industry has honed its techniques, hydraulic-fracturing operations have become more complex, requiring far more water and chemicals—millions of gallons per well, rather than tens or hundreds of thousands of gallons in the past.

Environmentalists and some community activists fear hydraulic fracturing could contaminate drinking-water supplies. They point to recent incidents that they say are linked to fracturing, including a water-well explosion in Dimock, Pa., and a chemical spill here in Shreveport.

The industry says fracturing is safe and argues that there have been only a handful of incidents among the large number of wells that have been fractured over the past 50 years. “Hydraulic fracturing has been used since the 1940s in more than one million wells in the United States. It’s safe and effective,” says Exxon spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman.

Even if the industry can make its case, it still must deal with the public-relations and political fallout from some of the questionable incidents.

Via: Wall Street Journal

Consumers, Energy, Environment, Natural Gas

During the current winter season, traders are dispatching bulk of their import of generators to Punjab where power outages, spanning from 15 to 18 hours has pushed its sales to substantial level. The demand for generators in the retail and wholesale markets of Karachi have plunged to more than 70 to 75 percent during the last few months.

The traders attributed decline in demand to short duration of load shedding and declining purchasing power of city general consumers.

“Poor response by people of Karachi during the current winter season towards purchasing generators have spelled gloomy business prospects for the traders majority of which have turned their attention to Punjab to get rid of the stuck up stocks” Khurrum Saigal, president Pakistan Machinery Merchant Group (PMMG) said.

He said poor sales of all kinds of generators available in the market was reported by most of the traders ranging from one kv of Chinese origin Lifan to 2 kv of Meiji company.

Referring to the overwhelming response of Punjab market regarding boost in sales of generators, he said the positive business opportunities have compelled large number of Karachi traders to market and dispose of their products before end of the winter season thus enabling them to place new import orders before start of the next summer season.

Traders and importers claimed during corresponding period of previous year, generator sales in both retail and wholesale markets was encouraging as substantial number of buyers purchased different brands of generators.

The traders are facing bleak prospects at one of the largest wholesale generator market in country at Shahra e Liaquat Karachi as sales of imported generators from China, are preferring to sale their stuck up imported generators in the vast Punjab market, where prolonged load-shedding hours have turned lives of people miserable.

Consumers, Electricity

I came across this news about Electric scooters and thought that they would be great for Pakistan and India. Electric cars may grab headlines in international media, but in China electric scooters, bikes, and other two- and three-wheeled vehicles are big business, and could make a significant dent in the country’s emissions. VentureWire reports exclusively on a $9 million investment by Cybernaut (China) Investment in a Wuyi, China-based light vehicle and scooter manufacturer.

“It’s a segment that’s growing much faster than other electric vehicles,” Min Li, a Hong Kong-based analyst with Yuanta Securities, tells VentureWire. “This already is the first consumer adoption of the EV concept in China.”

Consumers, Electricity elecrtric scooters, transportation

Pakistan government has raised the petroleum oil products’ prices by an amount ranging from Rs 4.37 per litre to Rs 5.61 per litre in the country for the month of December 2009.

Accordingly Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority has notified new prices of various petroleum products including petrol, kerosene oil, Light-Diesel Oil (LDO) and HOBC here on Monday, while the oil marketing companies (OMCs) have released the increased price of high-speed diesel (HSD) as it is a deregulated product.

Consumers, Oil, Petrol

Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) has plans to provide electricity to 7874 remote villages in Sindh and Balochistan. About 6,968 of these villages are located in Balochistan. According to P&D sources, the National Rural electrification programme is the main project being implemented by Wapda to provide electricity to the villages of all the four provinces in the country.

The Solar Energy projects are to supplement the initiatives of the Wapda and is proposed to be implemented in the areas where electricity cannot be supplied through national grid due to technical, financial and economical hindrances, the sources added.

They said that the villages selected for supply of electricity through renewable energy technologies are located beyond 20-km radius of national grid and therefore provision of electricity through renewable energy technologies is the only solution.

A programme for electrification of remote villages of Sindh and Balochistan through solar energy was prepared by Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) on PM’s directive, they added. AEDB, they said developed four PC-1s for Rural Electrification through renewable energy in Sindh and Balochistan costing Rs 1167.73 million, which were approved by the CDWP on March 21, 2006.

Source: Business Recorder

Consumers, Electricity, Energy

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during a visit to Pakistan last month, announced $125 million in new aid to upgrade power stations and transmission lines, part of a broader effort to reduce power shortages. Washington hopes such support will help Pakistan’s government make tough decisions, including unpopular increases in electricity tariffs, said one official. The International Monetary Fund’s quarterly report from July 31 on Pakistan’s economic performance recommended three price hikes. The first was on October 1 and according to the IMF, there is agreement for two more.

The United States expects to complete a review on how to spend $7.5 billion in proposed aid for Pakistan by the end of this month, with an early focus on the country’s decrepit energy sector, senior US officials said on Wednesday. Chronic power shortages are a big political issue in Pakistan. They undermine growth potential, economists say, and weaken support for the fragile civilian government.

US officials involved in the review declined to say how $1.5 billion a year in new funds would be allocated but made clear that infrastructure projects, particularly electricity, was an important part of the review. “Energy will be a major focus,” said one senior official. The aid has been signed into law but Congress has yet to appropriate the money. “It (energy shortages) affects people, it affects people’s perception of their government and manufacturing and jobs – everything,” added the official, who according to State Department rules asked not be quoted.

Last month, a US delegation travelled to Pakistan to work out priorities in resolving the energy crisis. The issue is seen as a test of Pakistan’s government, which is battling militants and helping the United States in its fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Source: Business Recorder

Consumers, Energy, Investment, Pakistan, Policy aid, foreign aid, IMF, US

Cross Post from TelecomPk.net

Telecom companies in Pakistan are one of the major power consumers and in addition to the increasing cost of electricity, they also face the challenge of lack of access to the electricity grid in rural areas to supply power to base stations. A few pilot deployments of  solar powered base stations were luanched earlier.Now Telenor Pakistan and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) have signed an agreement that will provide NSN’s off-grid site solutions that use solar energy to power Telenor base station sites in rural and remote areas. This is expected to result in substantial cost savings for Telenor Pakistan along with the social benefits that come with using renewable and clean energy.

Nokia Siemens Networks will design the sites, taking into account local solar mapping, site landscape and other factors to maximize the use of an abundant, clean, and natural energy source. Nokia Siemens Networks’ Green Energy Control will help deliver a sustainable solution while optimizing operating costs.

The solar-powered sites will be implemented using Universal Services Fund (USF) that was awarded to Telenor Pakistan in 2009. USF-based contracts aim to provide access to mobile services for underserved and unserved areas of Pakistan. Telenor Pakistan, till now, has been awarded three USF contracts for Mirpurkhas, Malakand and Bahawalpur region.

“It’s important that we connect the world in such a way that not only maximizes benefits for consumers and businesses, but also ensures the welfare of our planet,” said Saad Waraich, the Pakistan country director for Nokia Siemens Networks. “Providing communications to rural areas will become increasingly important and we believe renewable energy will be the first choice for such installations. In fact, the majority of base station sites installed by us by 2011 will use this form of energy. We are especially proud to partner with Telenor – a definite trend setter for the use of environmental technologies in network expansion.”

The GSMA has estimated that more than 75,000 new off-grid sites will be built each year through 2012 in developing countries. About 80% of the energy in a typical mobile telecommunication network is consumed by base stations. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power offer a reliable alternative to sites with limited or non-existent electrical grid access. Nokia Siemens Networks has already deployed more than 360 sites that exploit renewable energy and has over 25 years of experience in implementing solar-powered sites.

Source: Nokia Siemens Press Release

Clean Technology, Consumers, Electricity, Energy, Pakistan, Solar, power base stations, nokia siemens network, off-grid, telenor