KARACHI: Big global technology companies venturing into the arena of renewable energy is indeed good news for domestic electricity consumers in Pakistan who should switch to solar power at the earliest for slashing their power bills.
Sindh government’s Energy Secretary, Abu Bakar Ahmed Madani, expressed these remarks while speaking at the Huawei Fusion Solar Residential Summit Pakistan here at a hotel, according to a statement issued on Monday.
The provincial Energy Secretary said the domestic consumers should immediately install solar power systems to generate electricity on their own for their household needs. He emphasized that solar energy had emerged as the most viable solution for the domestic consumers who had been upset by the ever-increasing cost of electricity provided by the power utilities.
He said the government was also under the obligation to promote the usage of alternative sources of power generation owing to its limitations to cut down the power tariff in the country. He said the power consumers in Sindh especially in its rural areas had started adopting the option of solar energy to get electricity for their homes and workplaces.
He told the audience of the summit that the Sindh government had the fullest resolve to promote the usage of clean resources of energy including wind and solar power to reduce reliance on fossil fuel for the protection of the environment. The Energy Secretary said that Sindh was fully part of the ongoing global campaign to cut down the usage of furnace oil and natural gas for reducing environmental pollution.
Noted leader of industrialists in Karachi, Zubair Motiwala, said that Pakistan being an energy-deficient country had to rely on alternative resources of power generation. He said the renewable energy resources should be utilized as the country faces power shortages during summers and severe natural gas shortfall during winters.
He said the industries sooner or later had to switch to renewable resources to avoid shutdowns during winters due to ever-widening gas shortages. Motiwala was of the view that Pakistan should learn a lesson from developed countries like Germany and Austria that despite having the least favourable geographical conditions had attained the ideal state where they fulfilled almost half of their energy needs through clean resources.
He said that Pakistan should make progress at a much faster pace to utilize solar energy given its ideal geographical and weather conditions. Irfan Ahmed, HESCO Director, said the solar energy option should be used to lessen the issue of power load-shedding and to reduce power tariffs for the consumers. He said that big technology companies could play a major role to build recharge facilities for large electric vehicles.
He said that Pakistan should start indigenous production of the equipment and technology required for consuming renewable resources. He opined that the provincial governments in the country should be fully empowered to handle affairs related to solar power as renewable energy is a distributed resource.
Robin Xing, Huawei’s Director Digital Power in Pakistan, said the Huawei had been involved in solar power ventures for residential, industrial consumers and for utility-scale projects. He said that solar energy was like God’s gift to Pakistan as this was an enormous clean power resource available due to the ideal temperature and irradiation in the country.
He said the renewable energy policy of the government had also been helpful to tap clean power generation sources available in Pakistan. Engineer Khawaja Munseb Ali Arshad, the Country Sales Director of Huawei Technologies Pakistan, said that green digitalized energy systems are the specialized technological offering of Huawei for carbon free Pakistan.
He said that Huawei has a special focus on research and development activities as up to 60 per cent of its employees are doing R and D-related work at 12 different centers worldwide. He said that Huawei has a major role to combine digital technology with green power generation systems worldwide.
