Reported by: Hassan Hamza
In an effort to educate its
cadres and broaden their experience and knowledge in this area, the Iraqi Red Crescent is working to improve its capacity for managing and operating solar energy installations.
In partnership with the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology, the Society organised a training workshop to help with the design, operation, and maintenance of solar photovoltaic systems.
Director of the Water and Sanitation Department at the Iraqi Red Crescent, Nawar Abdul Qader, stated “The aim of holding such workshops is to keep pace with the Red Crescents’ trends in confronting the effects of climate change resulting from global warming. Most of our activities try to be climate smart to confront these challenges, so we seek to Our activities are environmentally friendly.”
He continued by saying that the Iraqi Red Crescent has a tendency to employ photovoltaic solar energy systems as their main source of power for their job operating mobile medical clinics and transporting food and goods.
However, Engineer Ali Abdul Aziz, Director of the Center for Renewable Energy Management and Technology, said “The main purpose of the workshop, which is attended by (16) people, including academics and specialized consultants from the Ministry of Science and Technology, is to provide significant knowledge information to members of the Iraqi Red Crescent on how to exploit solar energy in production. Electricity to operate water stations operating in various regions of Iraq, as these areas, especially remote villages, suffer from a lack of electrical power supply. Water desalination plants are supposed to operate continuously during the day. By exploiting solar energy, we will find a new and inexhaustible source of electricity production.”
He continued: “Resorting to clean energy to operate water desalination plants will be successful because it is less costly and harmful to the environment. It is expected that water desalination will remain the dominant option to increase fresh water supplies. Consequently, the burning of fossil fuels for the water desalination process will increase, and the resulting gas emissions will increase.”
In the same vein, Red Crescent engineer Ashraf Ali, a workshop participant, stated that the goal of the training is to create a team that is knowledgeable about how to operate and maintain these systems, because most of our projects on the humanitarian front now require the consumption of electrical energy, so we began to resort to clean and renewable energies to reduce toxic emissions due to the use of traditional methods based on fossil fuels.
