The blazing hot sun pushes temperatures to more than 45 degrees Celsius for much of the summer. In homes across the Kurdistan Region, there is a familiar sense of relief when the power kicks back in and sweltering residents can switch on their air conditioners.
Power outages limit the flow of water when they knock out pumping stations and have been known to throw government press conferences into darkness.
The solution could be found in an industry that is in a nascent stage here – solar power. But to succeed, the sector needs investment, education, willpower, and regulation.
There are just a handful of solar power projects in the Kurdistan Region – a couple of health clinics, a school, and a water pumping station, all supported by the UN’s migration agency IOM – despite the technology’s enormous potential.
Kurdish-Canadian businessman Shaun Ismail hopes to change that.
“I’m passionate about solar. My dream is for every house in Kurdistan and Iraq to have solar. When I see a family has light at night – they’re happy instead of living in the dark,” he said.
Ismail is the CEO of Sunlid Solar, an Erbil-based company that imports and installs European-standard solar systems. He hopes to make the regional capital a hub for solar power in Iraq and says there is interest, but little knowledge.
“No one knows where to start,” he said.
Education about the potential for solar power and how it works is lacking in the Region, he explained. People are waiting for the government to lead some initiative.
But the government keenly remembered a failed pilot project to install solar street lights on the road from Erbil to Massif. Cheap parts were blowing around in the wind, according to Ismail.
The parts are now boxed up in some warehouse and officials are wary.
This was “not a good start for solar,” said Yaseen Hasan Kareem, director of planning and studies at the KRG Ministry of Electricity.
He is an advocate for solar, but when he would suggest it to his colleagues and government officials four of five years ago, their response was, “Are you joking?”
“If a country has oil, it’s not easy to think about renewables. With renewables, the initial cost is high,” Kareem explained.
In 2013, the KRG developed its Vision 2020, laying out goals for the government and private sector. It supported introducing renewable energy sources, but expressed caution. “They may be good for our environment, but they also must make sense financially,” it said.
But then the budget crisis hit in 2014 and the government was forced to rethink a lot of its policies, including its reliance on oil. It began to take renewable energy sources more seriously, said Kareem, who is pushing for the introduction of regulations to control the sector in order to avoid a repeat of the road to Massif debacle.
At the moment, there is no oversight and no standards for solar power in the Kurdistan Region. Now there is an urgent need for regulation amid growing interest from the private sector, despite the government’s reticence.
Ismail’s largest client, some 60 percent of his business, is the United Nations. They are currently working on a project to install solar street lighting in an IDP camp south of Mosul, bringing its residents security and civic life.
The other 40 percent of his business comes from residential and commercial customers. He has growing interest from new construction projects like housing developments, factories, and farmers who are curious about solar power to run water pumps.
And no – dust is not a problem in this region prone to sandstorms. The technology is advanced to the point that it is essentially maintenance free, said Ismail. The panels simply need to be wiped down twice a year.
He tries to keep costs as low as possible. Installation of a 5kW system from Sunlid Solar costs $3,000 – or $1.67 per Watt. By contrast, costs range on average from $2.71 to $3.57 per Watt in the US.
Costs and environmental concerns – driving factors behind the adoption of solar power in the West – are not the main reasons compelling Kurdish customers to switch on the sun. Rather, chronic shortages of electricity are pushing them to find alternatives.
In the Kurdistan Region, demand for electricity is double the supply and people depend on diesel generators to kick in when the national grid cuts out.
The Kurdistan Region is entirely self-sufficient in terms of electricity, unlike Iraq which buys electricity from Iran and the Kurdistan Region to supplement its own supply. Currently, the Region gets more than 80 percent of its electricity from natural gas, according to figures from the KRG Ministry of Electricity.
Despite its nine power plants and two more in the pipeline, the Kurdistan Region is struggling to meet even half of the demand.
The Kurdistan Region and Iraq experienced an economic boom after the fall of Saddam Hussein. With the rapid investment and development, demand for electricity shot up with a 16 percent compound annual growth rate between 2004 and 2014.
Electricity generation started increasing in 2008 when the first private-sector power plant came online – but it cannot keep pace with demand.
The reason for the shortfall is twofold. First is a lack of fuel, especially gas, explained Yaseen H. Kareem, director of planning and studies at the Ministry of Electricity.
However, “even if we have fuel, we cannot operate all the power plants because the infrastructure, the transmission infrastructure, the lines and substations, also are not sufficient to transmit that amount of power,” he added.
The transmission and distribution system is fully owned by the KRG, which had planned to upgrade infrastructure. But that plan, like so many others, was shelved when the financial crisis hit.
The highest voltage the current distribution system can accommodate is 132 kV, explained Kareem. To meet demands of more than 5 gW, “we need to build 400 kV infrastructure”.
But if Ismail’s prediction is right, investing in harvesting the sun is the wiser option, rather than building up a system that relies on oil and gas.
“By 2050, the whole world should be solar,” he said, pointing out the potential the Middle East has to switch from oil to the renewable resource. “We have so much sun here.”
