Belén Gallego 0:40
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. This is Belen as I go from ATA Insights reporting from Madrid and you’re in the right place. We’re going to talk about solar energy opportunities in Jordan and we will begin literally in two minutes. We’re just going to allow a few more people to come into the the room, and we will begin promptly. I’d like to invite you to use The chat feature to just introduce yourself your company and tell us where you’re joining from today. Most people are working from home they say so please tell us you know where you’re based and and, and your company and your name. And, yeah, literally one more minute and we will begin Okay, so just just just hold tight.

Well welcome everyone. I hope that you’re all doing the responsible thing right now at least if you’re in Spain and stay in home, you know working from home. I see that we have people here from everywhere. You know, I’ve seen people from Netherlands a lot of people from Spain, a lot of your Damien’s out there. Who a Qatar, Dubai. Welcome everyone. You know, in this session, we go a little bit deeper into solar energy opportunities in Jordan. And we have with us today three top experts in the topic. I’d like to invite you guys to introduce yourselves. So Samir, why don’t you quickly introduce yourself and your company, please? Just make sure you unmute your microphone. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 2:59
Done. Good morning, everybody. Hope you’re doing fine. Please stay home. This is the first most valuable advice. My name is Samer. I’m a independent engineer working in Jordan, in the renewable energy energy efficiency field since the start in 2009. I’m also the president of the Association of energy engineers, which is one of the largest energy associations in the world with 18,000 members in 105 countries. And I hope you benefit from this

Unknown Speaker 3:34
small presentation.

Belén Gallego 3:37
Thank you very much, Samir. Let me just as close to my hair to introduce yourself please.

Unknown Speaker 3:47
Good morning everybody. My name is Maher from Jordan. I’ve been 30 years in business or business and the job done And the Arabic countries. Currently I am the CEO for ACWA bow or Jordan renewables company established recently in Jordan. And thank you very much for joining this webinar. And I hope that everybody will be safe. And the families as well. Thank you.

Belén Gallego 4:25
Thank you very much my hair. So that’s my head and submit from your them. And last, but definitely not least Imran Could you please introduce yourself shortly.

Unknown Speaker 4:33
Hello, everybody.

Unknown Speaker 4:34
Welcome to the webinar. I’m Imran, I work in Dubai for a company called enter where we are basically the expertise is in off grid systems mostly and an energy storage. Personally, I’ve got a PhD in power electronics and I have led the storage efforts within anywhere installing around 12 megawatt hours of off grid and monitoring systems in the last year. So I’ll be talking more about How storage is gonna play a role in large, renewable integrated grids, which is Jordan, welcome, stay home, that’s again an advice that I think everybody should be right. I’m also let’s try to force my kids out.

Belén Gallego 5:14
So we know what’s happening

Unknown Speaker 5:19
in my phone and just trying to break in so.

Belén Gallego 5:22
Alright, so we might see some children that are coming in. Alright, so, you know, be mindful that everyone’s working from home. Thank you very much for joining us, we hope and we’ve always believed that actually, webinars would a way to reach a lot of people, you know, learn from a lot of people and very easily feel from your office from your home. So this is why I think we also have like an increment in that in the numbers. So this is really good to see. And welcome everyone. Right. I’m gonna ask Samir, first to introduce you to please prepare your your presentation for for your presentation. The way that we’re going to do it is we’re going to have three presentation and then we’re going to take questions. Okay, you guys can send your questions through the q&a box anytime, and we are recording this session and we will send you the materials as well. So, Sam is almost ready. So I just wanted to before somebody starts letting you know that now, you know, for us to be able to spend time putting this content together, you know, inviting the speakers etc is is thanks to our sponsors that help us, you know, with funds to put this together. And I’d like to thank SDI nordland and Sterling and Wilson for the opportunity to work on this particular topic, Samir, I can see your presentation perfectly, and I can hear you so you go ahead, please.

Unknown Speaker 6:35
Perfect, thank you very much in Berlin. And we have also to thank the organizers and especially Anna, who is guiding us through this zoom seminar. I’m very happy today to share this presentation and I’m very proud as well, in all the accomplishments that we have accomplished in Jordan since the start of The renewable energy movement in general, in Jordan, we started them after the financial crisis in 2008. And the oil prices went up to one $147 and the we had to find a new resource. So, we moved into our local resources, which is the renewable energy. So renewable energies are available everywhere, at the start of the, say the renewable energy sector, the concentration was more on wind energy because of the because it was more mature at that time. But quickly, the solar PV industry took over because of the excessive development in technology and lowering the price and right now, we are We are very proud of the accomplishments and hopefully we can do more. A little bit about myself. As I said, I’m a the president of the Association of energy engineers, which is the biggest Association in the world for for energy management and we have separate blushes and in Jordan as well. Today we will talk about certain topics, and we talked about this on the resource, the stakeholders in Jordan projects, opportunities. Then you sector coupling that is going to happen in education, economics, the co2 emissions, of course, and jobs and sustainability. Now, Jordan is number four in the world in the quality of solar PV. So this is a natural resource. So it’s like oil. We have the sun This is the solar PD map. So it’s it’s a great opportunity and we have to utilize it. So investors from all over the world have flocking in. And we’ve witnessed that throughout the past 10 years. And it will continue to grow, because it’s a local resource, and we are going to utilize it. But we have to get smarter and we have to develop new technologies integrated, and we’ll talk more in details. So, as a country, this is one of the major resources that we will concentrate on in the future to develop. Now, there are many stakeholders in the sector and the regulative framework is the most important is the most important thing that the country can establish in order to integrate the solar PV or the renewable energy in into its own economical sectors. So we start with policy the policy was started with the Ministry of with member the Ministry of Energy and mineral resources under that we have the MRC which is the energy and minerals Regulatory Commission. Then we have the Ministry of Environment the Ministry of Public Works and house it. And we have the municipalities of course it is like damn, wait a minute capacity. We have regulations for installing the net metering systems. And we have the Contractors Association, the Jordan construction contractors Association, Jordan engineers Association, and then we have a fund to increase the penetration of renewable energy in it’s called the Jordan arrow noble energy and energy efficiency fund.

Unknown Speaker 10:45
Of course, all this electricity has to

Unknown Speaker 10:51
be fed into the grid and national grid. So we we have the after degeneration we have the National Electric Power Company. In epcor, and then we have the distribution companies and all of these, they need money. So, we have the Central Bank of Jordan supporting this requirements. In addition to the Minister of Environment, we have the Royal Society. And we have the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature. And we have also the

Unknown Speaker 11:26
the just one which is the standards and

Unknown Speaker 11:31
Institute’s that allows for all the materials to go in. So you have to get high quality material. And of course, we have to learn much more from Emraan about storage. And we have also the Department of Land on land and survey, which is changing the type of land used to create more solar into the country. And we have the Georgian Chamber of Industry, which is playing here. Very, very important role right now, in one of the biggest project that is coming up in Georgia There are two main types. So, you have to male to male roads to use solar PV you can you can be an investor, you can install the utility scale projects. So, utility scale projects are feeding the grid directly. So, these projects are the are owned by a country or they are owned by independent power producers and investors. And then you have the net metering so the net metering any consumer who has an electricity meter, they can cover 100% of their annual electricity needs by using a net meter either on site or off site. So if you have enough space at your facility, like a rooftop or carpark ground mount, or a metal building, then you can install all sort of PV and if you don’t have enough space, then you can go outside into the the distribution areas. We have three electricity distribution areas north, middle and south. And then you can install your net meter. So overall, so far we have installed the 2019 figures we install 101,185 megawatts, so we have this is 1.18 gigawatts and we have 222 megawatts under construction. The utility of course, it’s more important because it’s feeding the grid and it’s going everywhere. And then we have the net metering. These are the figures we have about 60,000. The latest published figures was 15,300 songs to beat the 16,000 maybe 17,000 and it will grow on my more in the next years. Now, there are different opportunities in the next phase in the next few years, we have the community solar. So the community solar, we have a big projects now, with the same bit of industry 100 megawatts. So basically a group of industries about 5070 industries will share a piece of land about 2 million square meters and installed up to three megawatts each. And then we have projects for the lithium ion storage on the utility scale and on the distribution. So we will we will see some regulations coming up for integration of renewable energy. And there is a lot of work going on and research into green hydrogen. So all the excess energy might be used by this getting hydrogen and there is a talk for development of about 1.2 gigahertz for that use. And of course, The demand side management, it’s a very important sector. For example, one of the main areas that we’re looking into is the liquidity vehicles, and to store electricity from solar PV during the peak hours between the 10 to two, so you can absorb all the big electricity during the sun peak hours without affecting the grid. And of course, we will put some drivers into that. And of course, the idea is the zero to grid requirements. With the it’s coupled, the most probably it will be coupled with the lithium ion and it’s very important of course, for energy security, and it would be definitely required in the next phase. So there is sector coupling. Instead of developing a like a

Unknown Speaker 15:55
big or an over all

Unknown Speaker 16:00
In your strategy, we will see more in depth strategies coupled with the different ministries. So the Ministry of Transportation is right now consuming the largest amount of energy in the country and this will have their own dedicated efforts to integrate more solar PV and integrate more renewables into light transportation like electric vehicles or the medium buses. Like we have the amount of transit there is a lot of dope into moving into electric buses, as well. And then you have the water sector. Jordan is a very poor country in water as well, but we need to talk with the about pumped hydro storage. So we’ll take maybe around 10 million meter cubes and in one of the dams and start the pump The storage business and in addition, Jordan will have to integrate desalination into the the water strategy and that might be also from solar PV depending on the economics and the agriculture, we have about 20,000 funds and all of these funds will slowly be moving into integration of solar PV. Already we have around 300 then maybe 500 Farms, which will have PV on grid and off grid. And in the industrial sector, of course, there is a lot of work. Now we will have a big big boom in the industrial sector because of national security and the importance of manufacturing everything and each country to so there will be a big big boom in the Indian Definitely a sector indication we are moving at several levels. So we have technical centers for educating the technicians and this is the solar PV Center of Excellence, the Jordanian German Center of Excellence for solar PV training in Africa, and serving the metric area and the man and of course, at the university level, we have about maybe, I would say, consider with the figure 10 to 15 universities with undergraduate and graduate degrees, master’s degrees in renewable energy, energy management. And specific, of course, we have at least 1015 planning centers offering training in different kinds of solar PV and a lot of upskilling for the already work. workforce in place. The Economics of the solar PV is incredible. It’s just incredible. And this graph is showing you the cost of kilowatt hour in Georgia. So the cost of kilowatt hour in Jordan, this is in the past seven, eight years. Let’s say the peaked in 2014. Because of the gas crisis, we reach about 2022 your sent to produce one kilowatt hour. And then we we had the first expression of interest and the second expression of interest. So in 2011, the prices were 16.7 cents per kilowatt hour dropped to about 6.9 us cents per kilowatt hour in 2014. And the 2018

Unknown Speaker 19:50
prices were

Unknown Speaker 19:52
2.55 us cents. And of course, if you are a consumer and you are installing solar PV system, so you are installing it by yourself. Government is not paying anything. So the cost for the government is actually zero. But of course, there are different problems with the overall picture. But I’m focusing focusing only on the solar PV prices, which is which are incredible. And now we are we, the economies all over the world are really suffering. So the solar PV is one solution that everybody is going to move toward, because it’s just cheapest and so, the technology has to evolve at a very fast way to integrate more renewable energy into the grid.

Unknown Speaker 20:42
Everybody is

Unknown Speaker 20:44
has to be worried right now about climate change, because we witness the the effect of a pandemic, and then not listening to scientists. So the scientists are saying that we have 12 years Before we have irrecoverable changes and we are witnessing climate change everywhere in the world, and we’re suffering billions, billions, like the Katrina and in Jordan casualties and losses every year, millions of JD is because of the climate change. So, we have to move into renewable energy very, very fast. And it because it has to become stable, and we have to move into a clean renewable energy throughout the world. So, in Jordan, the emission factor that we are using adopting as per the scientific society for 2019 is 690 grams per kilowatt hour. So you take this number and you multiply it by the kilowatt hour, and then you get a emission factor and sorry, emission number how much you know, a man, metric tons has been. So this picture is showing the utility scale and the wind and then Acme And how much we have produced kilowatt hour from the solar only is about 1440 gigawatt hour. So those are the 2018 triggers 2019 figures are not published yet. So we’re talking about a good number and hopefully we can use this number into a carbon market because we are developing our also the, we developed already our bio for the climate change. So, we will be developing the copper market coupled with the renewable energy market. The data noble Energy Solar PV is really creating is created about 500 companies out to zero within seven years, I would say or now eight years and thousands of people and direct and indirect manpower. So we have engineers in sales estimation design procurement, installation, commissioning maintenance, banking, HR project management And finance. So it’s a big, big opportunity for everybody. And it will continue to increase and I think will double in the next few years. And of course, sustainability is a big word. Everybody wants to have a stable economy. And we have an abundant resource from solar PV at a very low cost. And the technical support is available, and we have to move into integrating more renewable energy very, very fast. In the next few months, we have an educational system, we have qualified manpower, and we are moving towards our national security as a prime target, and we have to of course, be responsible and reduce the emissions. So this is my presentation for today. I hope it is worth your time.

Belén Gallego 23:47
In fact, you have a lot of questions so Okay, stop sharing the screen so that we can allow my hair to share his

Unknown Speaker 23:53
huh.

Belén Gallego 23:55
Yes to the top. Yeah, very good. And now my hair, I’m gonna invite you to do the same and also unmute yourself. And some of the questions that are on the box, you know, you can very easily answer them by text if you like was the mayor gives us his presentation. I’m not really sure depending how you guys go, we might not have a lot of time at the other side, so if you can put that in a large screen, I can already see it my head but it is just okay. Okay, perfect. You’re ready to go then.

Unknown Speaker 24:27
Yeah. Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Billy, and thanks for your value, a presentation about the potential opportunities for a PV in Jordan, and welcome, everybody in this webinar. I would like to talk about Jordan Akobo our experience in Jordan for bV and as you know, October is one of the largest investors in the area. For power and water desalination, Aqua Bora started the business in Georgia in 2011 by acquiring Cisco, which was there at that time, the largest power generation in Jordan utility and then started to explore the PV opportunities in Jordan. We have participated in round three around to the PV. And that was in my frog, where eco Bora submitted the lowest tariff for the one of the four the four companies that were qualified for this project in my frog. I want to talk first on Russia, which is recently we have commissioned in 29 December and Become online. This project is 50 megawatt is located near the Iraqi border at the far east of Jordan. And this is a very remote site. And if you can see from the solar map, it is one of the promising sites.

Unknown Speaker 26:19
Jordan.

Unknown Speaker 26:22
This project we have started working with the government to materialize it in 2017. We have signed the PPA with the government and we have assigned an EPC contractor was stirring and Wilson and construction started in 2019 in February and we have conditioned the plant and become aligned. A commercially operated and the symbols first of December 2019. As you can see, this is the location of the site. It’s 2000 million to 2000 kilometers by 1000 feet. So it’s very big site. And you can see that we were considering in the layout of this site that we have two small valleys so we were considering that from an environmental perspective.

Unknown Speaker 27:39
This one

Unknown Speaker 27:42
the project now is currently under operation, the inverter as we were skewed them from Santiago from Italy, and the modules from Trent from China. And the tracker system was from Extract This is the picture of the project after being fully installed. As you can see, nothing in that area except this place. It is a remote place and really it was a big challenge for aquaporin for the ABC contractor to stablish their this project by building

Unknown Speaker 28:33
an accommodation and

Unknown Speaker 28:37
all the employees were there in accom for almost one year until the project being installed and commissioned. As you can see in this slide, we have the notice to proceed in September 18. And the energization was In September 19, and the commercial operation 30th of October 19. The other project that we were working on it and it was before really Russia project is my frog one, which is part of round two, the government launched it in 2016 and it is 50 megawatt located in my frog Governorate, which is about 60 kilometers from a man where this is a qualified zone for investors and they have a training center as Sam was saying it is for the German Jordan Training Center. We are utilizing this plant training this facility on The equipment this project. We have started around to the first investor in one of the four we were the first one of four investors in this round and we have built it and we have commissioned the plant in 30th of December 2018. One year almost before the Russia project. The plant is working very well and we were taking the equipment for EPC contractor, Chinese EPC, contractor Northwest electric. The modules were from China Chin’s company, the tracker system were from Spain, and the inverters. We are from bought electronics in Spain.

Unknown Speaker 31:04
Another project now in Jordan, we are working on it actually is the battery storage. We have submitted a proposal for two by 30 megawatt hour. And this project is under evaluation by the government. And we are one of the six qualified companies that we are going to bid for this job. This is really what the October currently investing in Jordan and we are looking to have more and more investments depends on the potential opportunities. However, currently, we are waiting really to see the strategy of the government, for the renewables and for the power sector in general. We were promised that this strategy will be ready last year. However, because of many variables in the government, it was really postponed until maybe next month or on May, we will have the opportunity to see this

Unknown Speaker 32:21
strategy. The strategy will

Unknown Speaker 32:26
summarize the actual potential projects that will be established in Jordan in activity scale, big size projects, and the technology that’s going to be used for each of these projects. So we are waiting to see this strategy next month or the month later. Other things that we are really concerned in Jordan is

Unknown Speaker 32:59
to See the grid of the

Unknown Speaker 33:04
off taker to be a smarter grid, this matter requires really a lot of investment. And we hope that the government can secure enough finance to enhance the grid to be a smarter grid. So that can take more than 20% of renewables because now Jordan almost have more than 20%. A lot of utility companies as senator was presenting it is more than 20% of the total capacity. So, if any more renewables are going to be injected on the system, then the grid should be enhanced and investment shall be secured to enhance the grid. Otherwise The situation in Jordan will become as Jani no more investments other than battery storage. And anyway, this board this I think will be clear and the in the strategy that’s going to be launched by the government soon. Thank you very much for your attention and available.

Belén Gallego 34:28
Thank you very much my Hello, can I ask you to stop sharing your screen please? And so that I can actually ask Ingram to share his make sure that you unmute your microphone and run. And the questions are going up and up, you know, really summary centering some of them in my head, you can join that effort to but we have 41 open questions at the moment. So there is definitely a lot of questions out there between all of you. So we’ll see. Well, hopefully we’ll be able to take to attend to a few of those afterwards. Can Just make that in larger considered presentation, but I can see it’s our perfect. Go back to the beginning. Please Ingram and unmute yourself.

Unknown Speaker 35:11
Maybe I can do a limit check.

Unknown Speaker 35:18
There I

Belén Gallego 35:20
am muted you. You’re good. Just put it in large again. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 35:24
Hello, everybody. So I won’t talk more about I think the two previous speakers, thank you so much for your presentations. I think they’re quiet. They’re bigger experts in solar in Jordan specifically. So I’m going to focus a little bit less, not repeat what they’ve said. And just give a brief overview of Jordan and then talk about a few case studies where what we’ve done is we’ve we’ve reached on a smaller scale on smaller scale grids, we’ve reached that level that mahad is talking about right where, beyond 20% it’s it gets a little harder to control even on smaller grids, where you have a diesel generator, and we’ve done a few projects where we’ve been able to cross that percentage that that that presentation using storage as as a buffer. So I’ll be talking about three case examples on those smaller grids and how this is also applicable in larger grids, which is where I think Jordan is possibly going to go. To start off with, I think energy storage is an has been an important will become a very important part of the grid as we go forward. And Jordan is at the forefront of that battle, because you’ve been so proactive in in promoting solar, as you heard from somewhere in LA, right? The installations for battery storage are going to be in the gigawatt hours scale as we go ahead. Right. And the Middle East is specifically and in Jordan are going to be eating this way to an extent I think Jordan will start because they are the first people who need it. But even in the UAE and across these places, they’re already pilot projects happening. There’s multiple Giga factories coming up. And we have personally over the last couple of years been in touch with over 50 to 60 suppliers of storage systems and we’ve seen the Prices of storage dropped dramatically over that period, right? To give you a brief overview of why I think Jordan is going to be at the forefront of this, as was already discussed a little bit by Meyer in the end, is that if you look at the amount of solar installations that they’ve done in the last in the last few years, they’re going to be very soon at a point where it greater than 20% on they’re going to reach more than 20% renewables on the grid. This is going to have issues in terms of they’re going to be getting close to their peak in terms of solar capacity. So then they have they have choices of running inefficient, inefficient, regular Gen conventional generation, which will be running for spinning reserves or the need to go to storage. And who’s going to take care of the frequency who’s going to account for massive drops NPV we’ve seen in our plants and 80% drop NPV so we have very clear skies. I mean, the Middle East is blessed with great solar. But one small cloud that passes over your solar field could have give you like more than 50% drop in solar over a few seconds. Who’s going to take that up right who’s going to The DRAM raid controllers and number of these things, and storage is and will become an ideal candidate. I’ve just put one screen here just to give you an overview of what we think what I think is going to happen. And Jordan is essentially you can see that they’re already at 7.5% of solar penetration is even in 2018. I’m sure it’s higher now talking about new plants coming on and a bunch of other plants coming on in future projects. I think by 2022, they expect to have up to 2.2 or 2.5 gigawatts of solar on their system. The peak power in Jordan is the peak demand and Jordan I think, is around 2.5 to 2.7 gigawatts. Now, when you’ve got solar that close to your peak, where do you go, you’ve basically recreated a scenario that you see on a very small plant where you have a generator that cannot take any solar energy, right. So where does it go right where that load comes, and that’s where storage is going to play an increasingly important role. And there are studies that show that by 2023, the solar plus storage will become almost will become cheaper. Running a natural gas peaker plant. Now, if it makes economic sense, and if you if it allows you to throw in much more solar on your system cuts down on co2 emissions and it’s economically viable, then there is no reason this is not going to happen. And there was like the project that I was talking about the 60 megawatt hour was the first was one of the largest systems in the Middle East, right, tenders it still I think, in other process, hopefully, we’ll see that come to fruition very soon, but storage is going to become an ICT. And I think Jordan will be the will set the example on that right. Hopefully, the policies and everything will be set accordingly. But it will become a need at some point, not just a fancy

Unknown Speaker 39:40
pilot project. To talk about storage. Now I’m going to talk about a little bit more about what the storage supply chain looks like and where cost reductions can possibly come from in the future, right. Storage is not just one battery right now, if you pick up a single battery system that when you connect it to the grid, there’s multiple components that go into it. There’s going to be the cells that you have manufacturing Like Panasonic, Samsung, and increasingly a number of manufacturers from China doing this, there’s going to be then those go into a battery rack that then comes up to the battery management system, which then gives you DC power. Now, that then has to be connected to a power conversion system, which then converts that into something that will then be able to connect to grid and this control systems and each of these suppliers are very different. Now, if you talk to, you can get prices for fully containerized systems from companies like Tesla from Nevada in China etc. Who will put all this together for you put a nice margin on top of that and sell it to you. But increasingly, we do think it is possible to if you go down that supply chain and procure components at an individual level, put those together, you can cut down the cost of the systems. To give you an idea, I think it is possible to cut down the cost of the systems by 20 to 30% in terms of dollars per kilowatt hour if the containerization is done locally. But this for this you’re going to need a lot of local expertise. You’re going to need a lot of expertise how to put these things together. We just like More complex right now that a PV system but will become standardized, which is what anywhere is trying to do at the smaller scale here, right? We are trying to be locally containerizing. Right now doing our first pilot where we containerizing locally and building our own control systems. It’s a special expertise that is still not yet globally there. But I think individually if countries like Jordan, start doing that, where storage is a requirement and start being a, then you will need to depend less on containerized systems from other countries, right? Because that’s taken to give you an idea of who are the players out there, right. There’s Tesla that basically takes cells from Panasonic, Samsung does the entire integration gives you a full product, it’s a great product, we’ve used it,

Unknown Speaker 41:40
the prices are coming down. It’s technically one of the best that that we’ve seen on the on the market, but that that’s one company that does it right then this test world does alpha SS and we are going to increasingly See I think, the chemistry of storage moved from lithium ion NMC to lithium iron phosphate, right which is slightly bulkier, but it’s also cheaper and China is really pushing that right? Look at Narada CTL. And all these companies are pushing LFP. And Tesla has primarily done lithium ion NMC technology. But recently, they’ve announced that they’re going to be going through a partnership with CTL and get LFP batteries for their cars, which I’m sure will soon move, they’ll move in the same direction for the grid storage systems. So this is basically that supply chain and depends on where somebody plays in that you can get cost reductions. If you go right to the end and get get a full solution from somebody including software development and everything together, there’s going to be a price for that. But if as a country, you’re able to develop some local expertise and get some local players to be able to integrate for you, I think that can possibly help your costs come down. But that’s an expertise that not a lot of people have yet, but I think it will increasingly happen. Now, what I’m going to talk about is a little bit in terms of hybrid systems, because essentially in a smaller set up, we’ve already reached that stage. The solar penetration has reached levels where I need storage to be able to increase the penetration. It’s a good testing ground for storage of these technologies because the cost of power on a diesel generator based grid is a lot higher than what you see on the grid to give an example, if your diesel price is crashing right now considering oil prices, but for a general diesel prices in the last year or two, your cost of power can be as high as 30 to 40 cents a kilowatt hour. Now on that sort of a cost of power, solar makes immediate sense. And even storage though it has not reached really low cost levels yet starts making sense immediately. And that’s why we’ve been pushing towards that. And if you’re looking at so I’m going to present from your three case studies of what we’ve done on very low presentation good how we use storage, how we use storage on a medium penetration grid, and how we used it on high penetrations this system, right. So we’re going to look at the first one, right, this is this is a site office that we’ve been supplying in Dubai for the last three years, where we used storage for two functionalities, right One is to improve your efficiency of the generators that are used. We do not have a lot of solar on this site, as you can see on the on the brown line, essentially here, because there wasn’t enough space, but we still brought in storage to do two things, right, we improve the efficiency of the generation by peak shaving and ensuring that your plants that your conventional generation runs at its optimal efficiency at all times. And secondly, by storing some energy when the loads are low, and your conventional generation is very inefficient, we were able to switch to a battery through the night operation, right. So this is a very low penetration scenario, where storage, I would not say completely is economically viable yet. But it does have functionalities. And you can compare this to maybe in the West more where there’s an open market for ancillary services, right? Where if you can do frequency support, if you can do reactive power compensation, you get paid for those services, and that has become increasingly competitive in Western markets. But the Middle East, it’s still there are because it’s still it’s not an open market here yet, right? There is no ancillary services market here and maybe somewhere and Mark can tell us if there’s I don’t think There is that market available in Jordan as well. But when that market is open, it is beginning to increasingly make sense for just ancillary services, right, not talking about shifting solar or not talking about exporting excess solar. The second one is an increasing is a more interesting one where we’ve had. So if you look at the load curves that we’re looking here at a much smaller scale, it is, I think, where Jordan will be in three years, right, we’ve got a load of around 150 kilowatts, Jordan will be at 2.5 megawatts, let’s say, and the solar is at that level, right? If you’ve hit the solar, if you look at the solar curve, it is exactly where that where that grid, where that load. Power is, your generator essentially forming that that duck curve that we talked about, right where the solar is essentially replacing most of the generation during the day. Now, when you’re hitting when you’re so close to that load curve, one thing you can do if you do not have storage is you will have to curtail A lot of it or not install the solar in the first place. Because you have to give enough you have to run your conventional generation efficient enough and you have to have enough load for them to take over right you In this case we’ve used the Tesla power pack to sort of balance out that system during that generation point right and you can see the battery constantly before the store constantly takes in that excess solar right and manage if you look at the curve at the bottom, this is how terrible that load is right you can see the solar on this isn’t a particularly bad day when solar was going because of clouds is going very erratic and the load is also very erratic on his clients. Now you need to control the system. And the only way to do this without curtailing the solar a lot is if you put in storage if you do not have storage here, you will have to put in a lot of a lot of you will have to tear down the solar consumption solar that is installed on this grid. Sorry if you can hear my kids screaming from outside the door but okay.

Belén Gallego 46:42
Very cute. Don’t worry about it.

Unknown Speaker 46:46
Yeah, that’s so as I said, you have to deal with it. But this is a prime example of where I think Doron is going to hit. Now what is critical over here is the cost of the batteries to be able to do this. The second thing is going to be a control systems which will have to be increasingly complex. And better than, and compared to what you have on just a plain solar system, which will have to deal with that grid on a grid level is going to be much more complex and building this out is, is going to be an issue, right. And it’s going to be a challenge that needs to be solved. And I think if it’s solved on the local level, as I mentioned earlier, it’s got to be more cost effective. The third one is a is a specific plant where we’re able to reach 90% penetration of renewables on a smaller system. This is economically viable for diesel system, especially to diesel prices high. But at the grid, I don’t think we will be here for a while. I hope we can be where we can hit 90% renewables but it will still be a while is my guess unless storage drops dramatically to maybe $50 a kilowatt hour, which I hope happens, but it will be a it is this is the future maybe in 20 years, right or hopefully in 10 years. So here we are. As you can see, we are running essentially, there’s no generators coming on in winter, we basically got the solar charging up the batteries during the day supplying all the load and at night before Got the whole system running on on batteries. In summer when the load is slightly higher the generators do come on from the critical consumption essentially comes on for a few hours and runs at optimal efficiency. So here we’ve got like 90% penetration. And this is where I hope I grids can be in the future. But that’s basically an example of what we can see. I do think energy storage prices based on where they are in our grid systems especially depends on you on three factors depends on your diesel price, depends on your cost of storage, and depends on depends on what sort of returns the investors are looking at. Right? So this is we’re considering diesel prices. In some places. If you’re looking at $1, a liter diesel price storage makes immediate sense. I think those systems should go to complete solar storage very soon, including in Jordan or wherever. But if you’ve got low diesel prices, and if you’ve got subsidize these prices, that is a problem. For example, in countries like Saudi Arabia, it’s going to be a big challenge, considering where the oil price is right now. Unfortunately, the cases for storage is getting worse. They’ve actually put off certain investment decisions even within an hour right now, because the diesel prices simply don’t make if you’re replacing diesel on your grid, or if we’re replacing conventional generation on your grid, build your grid or on a small mini grid, the cost of that diesel or the conventional fuel matters. If what you’re replacing is not that expensive, then it makes your case a little bit worse. Solar is by far cheaper no matter what the reason prices, no matter what it is, as I had mentioned, which, in the UAE was at one point, something sexy latest video, right? So solar makes complete sense. But the real problem is that you cannot throw in, you cannot complete that grid with solar, right? You got time consumption, you’ve got other things and that’s where storage comes in. And when you combine solar with storage, we will get there depends on a bunch of factors within country to make that economically viable. But I do think it is going to happen. And that’s basically my presentation. You can I think I can get my email from from the organizers. ever opened it in their habitats? Any questions?

Belén Gallego 50:03
Thank you very much. I’m very interesting presentation. Okay, if you can just stop sharing so that we can see you all much closer. This is great. So okay, I got a lot of questions. Don’t worry, we’re recording the session, if you arrive a little bit late, we’ll be able to review the whole thing. And we will send you a link to the recordings and also the materials. So there’s been a lot of questions about this. And some of them I have been, like, answering him, and we have 46 questions open, but like 2122 already been answered. So clearly, these guys are doing a very good job. They just can keep up with demand. So I like to ask a few life if I mean, some are my fault that you wanted to answer one of them live you had marked it that you wanted to answer it live. Don’t forget to unmute your microphone so that we can hear you.

Unknown Speaker 50:54
Can you repeat that again, please?

Belén Gallego 50:55
Sure. You had marked one of the questions that you wanted to answer live

Unknown Speaker 50:59
Maybe that that’s by mistake, but if you have any question I can answer it. Okay.

Belén Gallego 51:05
So let me let me ask one of the questions that I thought it was quite interesting. Are there any plans to turn this electricity after satisfying the National Grid demand into chemical bound form, you know, like hydrogen etc? This is an important question, isn’t it? Because you didn’t that everyone is going to work biofuels right now?

Unknown Speaker 51:23
Yes, of course, we have French company that submitted the proposal for the government and they are serious about taking up to 1200 megawatts of megawatt hour of renewable energy. And they will work on three phases. The first phase is 400 megawatt hour. So they it’s, it’s up to them to submit the correct proposal and it’s up to the government to approve it. But there is a lot of talk and the, the hydrogen will be the green hydrogen will be used in The industry applications. So this is feasible, because they’re talking about kilowatt hour price of two us cents. And I think we are very close to be below the 2% solar PV price. So even if we don’t have electricity, I think we will have a developer that is ready to go into partnership with this company and provide Renewable Energy Solar PV at less than 2%. And and it will be integrated immediately. I think. So yes.

Belén Gallego 52:41
Okay. One of the questions here as well. This is for all of you by the way, this is probably my hair. This is a good one for you. It asks here do you think the CSP or concentrated solar power could be considered in the planning of Jordanian policy matters makers in terms of you know, providing the night time Solar availability.

Unknown Speaker 53:04
Yes billion. This is really a very interesting subject and Jordan now the policymakers are working on it, especially the Minister of Energy. We in aquabot, or had similar plants in Morocco and in Dubai. And we have given a brief proposal for the government that we can do similar projects in Jordan. And the government was a little bit keen on having this thermal storage. So that we can, they can benefit from at night generation. What we have been updated by the Ministry of Energy that they are going to consider 50 megawatt plant CSP and it’s going to be located in Mind area. But again, this will be very clearly known when the strategy being launched next month.

Belén Gallego 54:13
Okay, there’s a couple of questions here. I don’t know whether this from my head maybe from from for existing projects already, the large scale projects would only be interesting or would only be like economically feasible to put storage in them, like lithium ion storage.

Unknown Speaker 54:32
I do think increasingly it will become more competitive. And we are seeing in some places that it is being competitive. I mean, we’re seeing, I think builds up to five cents per kilowatt hour for solar plus storage in the range of four to six cents per kilowatt hour, which is, which is not bad at all. But yes, I think he’s right, it will become more comfortable. It’s already becoming competitive. But this depends on the local scenarios what your cost of generation is from conventional sources, what you’re depending on But yeah, I mean, I agree it is. It is the future, and it will happen. So what’s the

Belén Gallego 55:05
NCO II for a PV plus storage facility? Anyone? Drop it out there?

Unknown Speaker 55:13
It could vary, right? I think it would be if you’re looking at cents per kilowatt hour, you’re probably living and as I mentioned, between four to seven cents per kilowatt hour, right, right now, that’s the range. So solar is at one point something, but if you, I think as soon as it drops below four cents, that’s when you’re actually maybe even cheaper than just the cost of gas that you get, right? If you think about it, maybe. But that’s where it is at right now, in terms of cost of storage. There’s another question on cost of storage right now. If you’re looking at large systems of 100 megawatt hour, even from very reputable suppliers from the west, you’re at the price range of maybe 280 to $300 a kilowatt hour, which is maybe 50 to 60% cheaper than what was even two or three years ago. If this continues, if this trend continues and the cost of storage continues to drop to maybe. We do think it will reach There will be a stability period for next couple of years but if it continues to drop then it will become a no brainer and you will see a lot of storage products coming online all over the world.

Belén Gallego 56:10
Yeah. Do you want to have anything there my head?

Unknown Speaker 56:16
Just unmute yourself. Yeah, yes believe in the levelized cost of

Unknown Speaker 56:24
battery storage being hybridized in existing project of PV generation really, currently is not

Unknown Speaker 56:36
a good option,

Unknown Speaker 56:37
because

Unknown Speaker 56:39
the battery storage is still under development to reach the prices that can be afforded to lenders.

Unknown Speaker 56:54
And this is really will be

Unknown Speaker 56:59
conducted also So in Georgia, specifically with the, the government plans for these projects, so, in principle, if you can find the good finance, and there is potential opportunities to do it, that would be fine. But currently I can see that unfortunately. Okay.

Belén Gallego 57:26
I’m gonna do just two more questions. One is from the less than another one is like, from the times we’re living in, is electricity, the main energy demand for the uranium industrial sector. And what other initiatives apart from solar PV are there for industrial energy consumption production SME, this was originally for you, but I don’t know maybe in Rome, you have some some views as well. So I think it’s hinting that you know, don’t you need heat rather than electricity?

Unknown Speaker 57:52
Yes, of course. The the industry sector does consume a Good amount, but our maybe around 23% of the electricity generated in Georgia. But, of course they are consuming a lot more of the heat. But the good thing is that we have another revolution maybe it’s another seminar for the considering solar heat. So, they are constantly in solar heat has prices as dropped drastically. And we are witnessing we are going to witness a very big movement in solar heat at least 100 At least I would say estimate 100 industries will move towards solar heat instead of boilers within the next maybe three years or two years. So, yes,

Unknown Speaker 58:44
there is a huge change in terms of the output. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 58:48
yeah, we will. Yeah, that’s it.

Belén Gallego 58:50
Do you want to have anything in room?

Unknown Speaker 58:56
Yeah, I agree. I think csps have the means Direct solar heat, you have some limitations. But if there are a few technologies out there, I think Zillow, for example, has signed a few things. But they’ve also moved to a PV based heating system, but they will start off as a CSP CSP provider.

Belén Gallego 59:14
Mention the temperature, right,

Unknown Speaker 59:15
based on the temperature on the place and whether you have direct radiation or not. I think one of the challenges will be at an industrial scale. Yes, I think individual companies can do that if, as summer says if those technologies become available, but at the grid scale, there is still not all the regions will have that accessibility. And considering it will depend a lot on how lithium ion moves. And I think lithium is moving very fast, in terms of the production capacity that’s growing globally is massive. And as these guys continue to make it cheaper, I mean, they’re basically building Giga factories by the dozens right now. And this new innovation coming in, so depends on who moves faster. But for now, I would bet on lithium over the next two or three years

Unknown Speaker 59:59
or less So

Belén Gallego 1:00:01
this over the longer period that you know, I would agree with that I just have one more last question, guys this coronavirus situation, you know, will in quarantine. I mean, obviously is hitting projects right now, depending on where they’re at, obviously in the midterm is going to also be hitting the chain. But after all, say a year from now do you think eventually? Is this going to help our costs as renewable energy? Or is it gonna go against it? And it has to be really short because we run out of time. So what is your opinion for each of you? You want to start somewhere? Go Go ahead use?

Unknown Speaker 1:00:34
Yeah, I think the the the number one priority right now is the national security of energy, because energy goes into all sectors. So each country has to supply their own energy to the maximum and right now the let’s say the bottom line is to have 30 or 60 or 90 days maximum supply of oil, but with this with the current climate Ces in 90 days is not enough. For sure. Storage is going to be in demand big, big, big demand. We will see eventually power plants coming online, we will see a lot of movement in solar PV unprecedented movement where worldwide, you can bet on that.

Belén Gallego 1:01:17
Yeah, you know, I like your optimism summaries is quite contagious. How about you my head and like, optimistic or a little bit on the other side, my half a

Unknown Speaker 1:01:28
billion. I think after one year from now, the world would like to have some rest to think, for the future. So I’m not really optimistic that after one year from now, there will proceed with renewables. Because really, the current crisis is hitting the economy. They will be focusing on other aspects other than this one

Belén Gallego 1:02:01
You have a bit of both, you’re gonna break the tie.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:05
I think it comes in boils down to the economics in the end, right? If you look at, there’ll be two countries, we’ll look at the two things that individual countries will start looking at. One is energy security, I think for themselves, and the second is going to be economic. If solar, if the renewables are cheaper, then no matter what the world situation is, where is if somebody is looking at two sources of generation one is cheaper than the other, they’re always going to go for the cheaper. And on that front, and that’s, and to me, I think that is why solar has grown. Right? The sustainability aspect and all that is great, it is required. But if solar today was sold at 20 cents per kilowatt hour, we wouldn’t have this many installations, the economics will continue to win. And I think based on that, we will continue to see renewables and it is completely based on economics. Second thing is going to be energy security. If you’re depending on other countries for oil for for for to be able to produce your power, then I think those countries will start looking at renewable resources a little bit more so that they have some energy security, which is I think, how Jordan To start moving towards, towards renewables, they had problems with natural gas coming in.

Belén Gallego 1:03:06
Indonesia is a politician said exactly what he wanted to hear. So thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:12
I think it’d be a good time.

Belén Gallego 1:03:15
Thank you very much in my head and emblem for your time for like sharing, you know how with us, thank you very much for everyone who’s there in the audience. And the last piece of advice you guys stay home, stay home, look after yourself. Look after your people. We’ll get out of this one. Thank you very much and see you soon. Thank you. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai