Solar parks

A 1,000 MW solar park is being established at Bahawalpur by constructing ten sub-parks of 100 MW each. The first sub-park has already been completed whereas the remaining nine are yet to be built. This first park was built by a Chinese company and the electricity produced from this park is being provided to the national grid. To complete the first sub-park, around 400,000 solar panels have been installed. A large number of Pakistani engineers, technicians and workers were deployed along with the Chinese engineers and trained thoroughly on the installation of solar panels through an On-the-Job-Training (OJT) programme. This local work force will now be fully geared-up to undertake the installation of the remaining solar panels of nine sub-parks.

Also, as the number of solar panels is quite high, it is recommended that the solar panels and solar cells should be manufactured in Pakistan. The raw materials – Quartz and Silica – for manufacturing the cells are available in abundance in the country. Let’s discontinue the policy of importing ready-made, off-the-shelf solar panels from abroad for our projects. We must save our precious foreign exchange as much as we can.

Air-Cdre (r) Azfar A Khan

Karachi