Long Story Short:
- To go green, we need to solve two problems, the technology behind PV itself, & to find a way to make it economically beneficial.
- We need to research, fund, & test new technologies (locally).
- The government spends 30 fils for every 1 kWh generated.
- We could get homeowners to install their own PV panels, use the generated electricity in their household, & get the MEW to pay them (or their investors) for it (a feed-in tariff).
- The MEW saves money, the people make money, banks make money, & we produce less emissions.
- See the suggested Feed In Tariffs below.
- We should also watch out for the scammers (Learn from Italy).
Long Story Long:
Here is the thing, we can take a hybrid approach to the situation.
We have two problems to tackle:
- The technical characteristics of the PV Panels.
- The economic viability of switching to PV.
A. Al Attar mentioned that we need an NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) of our own to develop solar panels that suit our local requirements, since the current technology has been developed by countries that exist in colder climates. I totally agree with him on this. The issue is that we already have these governmental agencies, but I won’t get into why we haven’t worked on that over the past 40 years, because I don’t want to get angry and end up screaming into a pillow.
For more information regarding the current techniques used to reduce the temperature of the PV panels, see the end of the post.
The Current Situation
KFAS, KISR, along with other government institutes mentioned that they have installed PV systems on 150 residential rooftops in 2018 and they were planning on doing the same to 1,500 homes in Kuwait by 2021.
I believe that this is cool, but it’s not fast enough. And we both know how the government tends to take its sweet time and likes to unnecessarily complicate things.
The Approach
First, lets understand the term, Feed in Tariff:
It is a price governments or power companies pay PV owners for the excess electricity they feed into the grid. So imagine that you have your own PV system on your roof top and you are feeding this power into the grid and the government pays you for it, as if you are a mini-power station (Distributed Energy System).
At the moment the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) spends 30 fils on every kWh it generates and sells it to you for a crunchy 8 fils/kWh.
Now, for the government to make a new solar PV park they have to go through so much hassle, case studies, locations, financing, project tenders, and when they decide to swipe right, the Parliament will find a way to halt things for some reason (*cough cough*).
So, the hybrid approach I am suggesting is to start using the current PV technologies and create a mini economy out of it for the time being while we work on a way to make the panels more suitable for our climate, and maybe pioneer the technology to a point where we become able to sell it internationally? Just saying..
Any Reason To Mention My Dissertation
So back in 2014 my dissertation was about a concept called “Distributed Generation PV”, which suggests that in addition to building gigantic solar farms, we could make use of the residential rooftop spaces and aid in reducing our use of oil in generating power.
In the process, I researched the technical needs and economical benefits of this scenario (full disclosure, it was at a time when oil prices were at $100US/barrel).
Now, how can this be of use NOW? Look at it from an economical point of view, how can it help us reduce our costs and we get to make money out of it, somehow?
No one says no to more money
The people here LOVE investing in & selling stuff, so why not give them the ability to sell power to the government? Hear me out.
What if the government worked with the banks on creating funding schemes for PV installations on the residential rooftops, and created a feed-in tariff?
“But what about the not-so-smart grids?”
Well, the government could allow the people to feed the power they generated back into their own homes and charge the MEW for it. This as a result, offsets some of the power which the MEW generates for residential use, and allows them to allocate it to other consumers, such as factories for example, and reduce our oil and natural gas consumption.
Also, cleaning and maintaining these PV panels will be the responsibility of the household, not the government’s, which reduces the project’s operations and management costs.
Fun fact, installing PV solar panels on your rooftop reduces the power load used by the house by 5.9 kWh/m^2, since the panels take in this heat instead of your roof. Which in turn reduces the work exerted by your AC to keep the house cool, which in turn reduces your power consumption.
The Bling Calculator
But how much should the government price its feed-in tariff? Well, to calculate this we need to keep a few points in mind:
- How much does it cost the government to generate 1 kWh?
- How much does it cost to build the infrastructure needed for a new conventional power generator complex with a capacity similar to the total expected generation capacity of 300,000 homes with PV panels on their rooftops?
- The monetary value of enhancing our air quality (reduced medical bills, increased touristic prospects, breathing..)
- Short, medium, and long term benefits of installing this scheme over the next 25 years.
- The cost of a PV installation for an average sized residential rooftop.
Now, after we calculate all of these, we can come up with a ballpark value of how much the feed-in tariff should be for it to be lucrative enough for the people to install and make money out of it. Or we could simply copy the feed-in tariff schemes implemented by Jordan & Egypt (Please don’t).
The people make money, the government doesn’t need to increase its electricity tariff (for the time being), the banks make money, and we create a demand for PV products locally. Everybody wins.
Suggested FIT Prices
The government in Al Shagaya Phase 1 Concentrated Solar Power (A different type of solar power) project paid around 48 fils/kWh over the total lifetime of the project. So they paid the total amount of the project (whether in one go or over a period of time) but the cost of renewable power generated over the lifetime of the project will cost them that number (this is called the Levelised Cost of Energy, LCoE)
Keeping in mind that this number is 18 fils more than what the government usually pays on average for generating electricity through its conventional power stations.
In Phase 2, which was a good sized 1.5 GigaW PV project, and was going to be managed by the KNPC, a Chinese company submitted a bid for 11.2 fils/kWh (jeez…are they giving out free solar panels in China?).
The FIT in Germany is around 43 fils/kWh and in the US of A is around 50 fils/kWh, while in Egypt it starts at 36 fils/kWh.
| Country | Germany | USA | Egypt |
| FIT (fils/kwh) | 43 | 50 | 36 |
The reason why I mentioned these FIT schemes is to show that the price differs from a country to another, and it usually depends on the local policies and the actual benefits and savings gained by the local government. I believe that we should start our FIT with at least the usual 30 fils/kWh and see how it goes. Or maybe we could start at a higher FIT and then reduce the number after the home owner/investor covers their return on investment period (5 to 8 years give or take)
Also note, one of the reasons why Phase 2 of Al Shagaya had a lower price, than the first one, had to do with the economies of scale, i.e. the bigger the project, the cheaper the cost will be for every generated kWh.
Scammers
To do this though we will also need to create a way to monitor and oversee the residential power production and use in these areas to avoid scams.
Italy a while back started to implement a FIT scheme, and then stopped it after a while when they realized that the people were generating solar energy…at night.. The locals simply hooked up diesel-powered generators to feed electricity into the grid after sunset. Lol.
One thing we could do is to create a device (locally, please stop importing stuff you can make!) that monitors the output of the solar panels and uploads the data on the MEW’s website.
Then this data could be monitored for irregularities of production quantities and periods, and we can compare them to other installations in the area. Irregular producers get flagged and investigated.
So, what do you think?
Extra
Current methods to reduce the surface temperature of PV Panels:
There are a few techniques, that I think are currently utilized in phase 1 of al shagaya project:
- Heat sink (a piece of metal designed in a way to suck some of the heat out of the back of the panel and release it into the air),
- Back surface water cooling, and
- Spraying water on the solar panels.
According to a few researches, spraying water on the solar panels has the highest effect (it could reduce the panels temperatures by 4.7 DegC which is amazing), but, this is not suitable for us in the long term because we already face water scarcity, buuuut maybe we could use our waste water? Food for thought.
References
Egyptian Feed in Tariff Scheme
German & American Feed in Tariffs (Part of a Saudi Research on FIT)