‘Declaring Grid Independence’ with Solar Energy amidst Lebanese Power Crisis – EQ Mag Pro

As the power crisis in Lebanon continues, electricity remains to be luxury for some. The lack of imports and high demand for fuel has caused fuel shortage and forced the Lebanese government to first reduce and then remove fuel subsidy resulting in the failure of public power generation.

With Électricité du Liban (Electricity Corporation of Lebanon) or EDL decreasing power supply to almost two hours a day and even completely shutting off the power in some areas, the availability of electricity is a priority for Lebanese citizens, who have to find a solution for themselves.

Private user generators that used to cover the gap in public utility grid-supplied power are now struggling to cover the gap and provide more than 22 hours of autonomous power supply. Adding to this is the health and environmental risk that the use of diesel generators to generate power can exert and cannot be overlooked.

According to Rachelle Kassouf, Director Engineering at Green Essence, solar PV technology includes highly efficient banners and smart multi-function invertors and seems ready to compensate for the lack of fuel in a country rich in solar energy. The annual average solar radiation in Lebanon ranges between 1000 and 1500 kilowatt-hour per meter square per year to 2000 kilowatt-hour per meter square per year.

Solar PV systems could generate more than 4500 kWh per year for Lebanese residents. The use of a micro-grid solar PV system will allow Lebanese citizens to declare their grid independence and run loads from solar energy and battery storage. This will provide energy savings when the grid is up, along with off-grid independence and security when it is down or compromised.

While Kassouf talked about the landscape of opportunities for solar energy in Lebanon, she also mentioned some drawbacks to it. Regardless of the growing interest, high cost and shortage of PV system equipment are setbacks to PV installation. Due to high demands, sourcing of necessary components is getting difficult; and clients have to wait around eight weeks for system installation.

In a webinar conducted on “Outlook for Lebanon Solar Energy – Opportunities and Challenges” by EQ Magazine, Hadi Abou Moussa, Energy Engineer at Lebanese Centre for Energy Conservation (LCEC), added to the moderator – Ms. Kassouf’s opinion. He eloquently introduced national policies, incentives, and schemes that created momentum for solar energy in Lebanon. He also explained where the journey of solar energy in Lebanon began.

Published by the NCC, the first National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (NEEAP) was planned in 2011 and adopted by the then government. This led to energy generation from renewable energy sources to be met by 2020. The second NEEAP was published in 2016 parallel to the national renewable energy, where targets of each source of renewable energy like hydro power plants, windmills, solar PV, solar systems, centralized and decentralized were defined.

Recently, the renewable energy plan for Lebanon prepared by IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency) was published, and a new target was set. A target being 30 per cent electricity generation of that generated in 2013 to be from human energy sources. This, along with many finance mechanisms like low-interest loans, grants from the EU, and the scheme applied by the EDL maximizing the benefits from energy generation through solid business systems created momentum in the solar market. In 2011, there were 330-kilowatt gigs installed; however, by the end of 2020, there were almost 90 megawatts stored.

Due to the decentralized market by the end of 2020, there were almost 90 megawatts totaling impressions of 130 million dollars with 12 per cent of these systems for around 11 megawatts world systems. The prices of these systems fell drastically in the last ten years due to proper storage for batteries and the rest of the systems. For a system with storage in 2012, a unit cost was 6.4 dollars per watt in comparison to 1.7 dollars in 2020 for a system with a storage price of 3.7 dollars. From 2012 to the end of 2020, this price fell to around 0.7 dollars per watch bill.

Moussa explained, the residential sector in Lebanon presents around 12 per cent of total restored capacity, 20 per cent of the total investments, and 54 per cent of the total number of installed projects implying a high demand for this sector.

In the residential sector, projects offering smaller than ten kilowatts are preferred. By the end of 2019, seven per cent of the total installed projects with a size less than ten kilowatts, constituting 14 per cent of the total investment in the sector. Presently, these numbers are much higher because of the electricity crisis. One of the main challenges is how to quantify this increase because there are many players in the market and not just the traditional or known ones.

“For solar field, we have the 180-megawatt solar plant, which is currently in the negotiation phase before licensing, and the 300-megawatt solar farms or palms plus 150 megawatts and 300-megawatt tower storage that is currently in the pipeline and it is under structuring and the standard preparation.”
– Hadi Abou Moussa on utility-scale project

The panel also voiced their opinion on the future of the solar sector in Lebanon. They discussed the future prospects of solar, other renewable and non-renewable energy in Lebanon. Upon being asked Joe Hawi, Managing Director at Nova Energia, predicted, “The new government will be focused on creating the legal infrastructure like they did in Jordan with wheeling agreements or peer-to-peer energy sales, the de-monopolization of EDL…”

He mentioned, “One good thing (is) that the purchase of fuel to Lebanon has been de-monopolized… which means that the group of people that were benefitting from this, now do not have the sole proprietorship of this supply. So, this will unlock the market and will open the way for some legal changes.”

He added, “The market will introduce players that have a keen interest in capitalizing an opportunity and when that happens we will see… municipality level projects, some commercial (and) industrial level projects, some neighborhood-level projects, and community level projects, and that will be again a huge multi-hundred megawatt scope… (In) the next year and a half or two it is going to be a lot of three kilowatts, four kilowatts, two to ten-kilowatts projects and these are going to dominate.”

On being asked for predicting development in the next five to ten years, Moussa said, “In the last five years in 2016, we had around 24 megawatt installed and decentralized solar systems, and now it is around 90… by the end of 2020, it was around 94… Of course, the current crisis has shifted the market towards more residential and small-scale systems, but we have a more optimistic point of view…”

While answering a question about code for PV installation during the panel discussion, Hadi explained, “There isn’t a code… (But) there are best practices regarding the sizing, the protection device needs, also the lightening protection and the earthing systems that should be available with any system. For standards, there are many references… To conclude, there isn’t a standard PV installation for Lebanon, but there is a lot of… best practices and guidelines that can help anyone.”