17,000 OR 100? SOLAR ENERGY, PAKISTAN, HEARTS AND MINDS

Two numbers: 17,000 and 100.

President Obama has ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. A Pakistani solar panel maker gave families in 100 small houses in Narian Khorian, a Pakistani village 50 rugged kilometers from Islamabad and unreached by the national grid, a panel and a battery and the families were, for the first time, able to run a fan and 2 light bulbs at night.

Which number will have more long-term impact?

It is said that when the FDR New Deal’s Rural Electrification Administration (REA) built power lines into rural America and delivered electricity for the first time it won the heartlands for the Democratic Party for 2 generations.

Pulitzer Prize-nominated war correspondent Dexter Filkins recently told Charley Rose that going into villages in Pakistan was like walking into the 4th century. Might solar panels do for the Coalition Forces in the remote rural reaches of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Swat Valley what the REA did for the Democrats in the 1930s?

Could it be the way to win Pakistan’s hearts and minds?

According to retired military officer, technical manager and New Energy advocate Azfar Khan, Pakistan is ripe for the development of distributed generation. Though there are isolated instances of distributed solar energy installations in the country, it is still unknown enough that Khan felt obligated to explain what a solar panel is to his All Things Pakistan readers.

The sun in Pakistan. (click to enlarge)

Khan: “…the basic item required to generate this electricity is a solar cell, approximately 2 inches x 1/2 inch…80 to 100 or even more such cells are pasted on a tampered glass sheet whose dimensions are generally 1.5 feet x 4 feet. The glass sheet with cells pasted on it and inter-connected, is called a solar panel…it’s the sun’s light and not its heat that produces electricity.”

The 20-to-25 year lifespan of a solar panel is particularly important in Pakistan where material things are more rare and things that last are more precious than in the West.

Familiar to some Pakistanis are the solar panels and batteries that day or night power the emergency call boxes on the M1 motorway just completed in 2007 between Peshawar and Islamabad. That’s a powerful image: A stranded motorist in dangerous territory able to reach help thanks to solar energy.

The M1 and other motorways in in Pakistan. (click to enlarge)

Pakistan’s only solar panel manufacturer presently imports its cells. Khan believes the cost of solar energy can be brought down if the cell and panel manufacturing are done in Pakistan. He substantiates this claim with facts and figures. The raw materials, quartz and silca, are abundant. Refining and purification equipment can be acquired by a one-time capital expenditure.

Khan sees one further element necessary for Pakistan’s solar energy industry, something he is confident Pakistan can supply.

Khan: “…[W]e have the finest and the most hard-working, skilled manpower available in country…[T]he retired personnel of the defence services who have been working on electronics and telecommunication equipment during their service careers would be the best choice for deployment on the manufacture of solar panels and cells. These people are highly skilled and disciplined and get retired at an early age…”

And, Khan adds, they will leap at the $45/hour jobs for $5/hour.

The West should leap, too: At the opportunity to create a qualtiy niche for former military personnel who might otherwise not find productive employment except with terrorists and heroin kingpins.

Pakistan has capable battery, inverter and glass manufacturing capabilities that would fill out the requirements for a domestic solar system industry.

Fascinating: Khan recommends creating joint ventures with Western countries to get Pakistan’s solar energy industry up to speed. He reports that a hugely successful Indian wind power manufacturer used the joint venture strategy but avoids referring to India's Suzlon by name. Clearly partition and 1948 are still raw wounds he does not want to open while making his pitch for healing his own nation.

Anticipating skeptics who will argue solar energy is too expensive for Pakistan to put its effort into, Khan has formulated a convincing an answer (albeit in clumsy English).

Solar Panels being used for water extraction in Rarkou village in Nagarparkar, Sindh. (click to enlarge)

Khan: “If the cost is that high then why the entire Europe is still making use of this form of energy while the sunshine is very scarce in the European countries. We have to adopt measures to bring this cost down so that an ordinary Pakistani could purchase this system. And to do that, all the points are in our favour.”

Khan also sees a gamut of opportunities in solar energy for Pakistan. He believes solar power plants ("solar parks") can feed urban utilities.

Khan: “In some countries, solar systems have become so popular that senior citizens are investing their pension money in solar parks…One solar park is owned by as many as 700 to 800 individual investors, each of whom owns one or two large solar panels in that park. The income received from these panels adds to their pension amount and is guaranteed to be paid by the utility companies for 25 years…[T]here is a long waiting list of willing investors.”

click to enlarge

And he sees a huge boon to the poorest communities from simple solar cookers.

Khan: “A solar cooker is nothing but a concave mirror fixed on a metallic stand…I have myself taken tea prepared on a solar cooker! … Six thousand refugee families in Sudan are making use of these cookers successfully. Earlier, the women folk used to go out and bring thorny bushes as fuel for cooking purposes. With the arrival of the solar cookers, this practice has ceased and the forests are also saved. The people living in our hilly areas can emulate their example…”

Solar cooker in Somalia. (click to enlarge)

The biggest of solar boosters in the West have nothing on Khan but his enthusiast mentality is beside the point. He makes a credible case for investing in the Pakistan sun at the very moment when the West is looking for a credible way into all levels of Pakistani society.

Khan: “Investing in a solar electric system has many benefits. It allows you to produce your own electricity with no noise, no air pollution, and no moving parts. Moreover, this system would never run out of fuel (sun light), and it will help reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted by coal and natural gas-fired power plants. Due to these unique characteristics, solar electric technology has been called “the ultimate energy source for the 21st century”… Even countries with less sunlight are making the best use of this free resource (sun light). We, in Pakistan, aren’t short of sun light as sun shines on the entire length and breadth of the country throughout the year. We can make use of this inexhaustible resource and contribute towards meeting the shortfall of electricity.”

Everybody from the CIA to those who are charged with smartly handing out stimulus funds to Venture Capitalists looking for a good bet in New Energy need to pay close attention to Commander Khan. He may be retired from the military but somebody needs to put him in the solar energy business.

Check out this 1994 primer on solar energy in Pakistan and think about a Taliban-like orgaqnization dedicated not to disruption but to solar energy generation.

17,000 or 100?

Do they train solar panel installers in madrassahs?

Utilizing Solar Energy in Pakistan
Air Commander (Retired) Azfar A. Khan, February 17, 2009 (All Things Pakistan)

WHO
Air Commander (Retired) Azfar A Khan, technical management/consultant/quality auditor and New Energy advocate

WHAT
Commander Khan makes a great case for solar energy development in Pakistan.

Solar panels - at far left - being used for water extraction and drip irrigation in Wandhan jo Wandio, a Nagarparkar, Sindh village. (click to enlarge)

WHEN
Khan wrote a similar piece in June 2008 calling for wind power and wind turbine manufacturing capacity to be developed in Pakistan.

WHERE
- In Narian Khorian, 50 rugged kilometers from Islamabad and unlikely to get electricity from the grid for the foreseeable future, a solar panel seller donated 100 panels for 100 houses. Each panel operates a fan and 2 light bulbs, luxuries never before known in the village.
The M1 motorway connects Peshawar and Islamabad.
- Nevarra, Spain, gets 70% of its power from solar and wind.
- Quartz is abundant in northern Pakistan and the country has an “inexhaustible” supply of silica.

click to enlarge

WHY
- Inevitably, the price of fossil fuel-generated electricity will become prohibitive.
- In relatively isolated settings, solar energy is already being used in Pakistan to light homes, run fans, power refridgerators and microwave ovens, warming homes and swimming pools, provide light in gardens and on streets, run TVs and computers, and pump water from the sub-soil to irrigate.
- The term photovoltaic (PV) comes from photo, referring to light, and voltaics, referring to electricity.
- Solar panels and batteries power emergency call boxes and hazard lights on Pakistani highways.
- 80 solar cells per panel. Each solar cell, imported, costs Rs. 1000. Million, perhaps billions, can be put to work in Pakistan. The raw materials are quatz and silica, both abundant in Pakistan.
- The Shaheen Foundation in Islamabad has an up-to-date computerized record of retired defense service personnel with electronics and telecommunication experience expertise equal to western workers in the same industries.
- A distributed generation solar system should include panels of cells, tampered glass sheets, batteries and inverters to convert DC electricity into AC.
- Khan also advocates “solar parks” (solar power plants) and solar cookers. Solar panels in “parks” rest on tracking devices and therefore can generate up to 40% more energy than fixed, roof-mounted systems.
- A solar cooker is a concave mirror on a metallic stand that focuses the sun’s rays at a point to intensify heat to cooking temperatures.

The Federally Administered Tribal areas have productive sun. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Khan: “the question that automatically crops up one’s mind is: ‘If it can be done in Spain, why can’t it be done in our country?’ The answer is a big ‘Yes’…”
- Khan: “One would be surprised to know that this raw material [quartz] is being utilized by the local population of Northern areas for raising the walls of their houses in place of bricks as the poor simpletons don’t know its value. Some of them take it for marble as well!”
- Khan: “Let’s make best use of our existing facilities with a bit of augmentation. This approach would be highly cost-effective!”
- Khan: “…Just imagine! …The people living in our hilly areas can…use these cookers which might not be costing more than Rs. 1000 each!”
- Khan: “It’s said that if enough solar panels using indigenous solar cell are installed and energy efficiencies are ensured, the home owners can receive a zero power bill!”