TEHRAN - The government has implemented a project to provide nomadic households with electricity via the use of solar panels.

Knowledge-based and indigenized technologies are used in carrying out this project, Fars reported.

Some 30,000 solar panel systems will be provided to the households. The number of panels is expected to double by the end of the current Iranian year (March 19, 2024).

The government pays 90 percent of the costs of each system.

Solar panels are used to easily provide electricity in far-off places. It is not only clean but also cheap and limitless.

Solar-powered photovoltaic panels convert the sun's rays into electricity by exciting electrons in silicon cells using the photons of light from the sun, which is the cleanest, most reliable form of renewable energy, and can be used in several forms to help generate electricity along with income.

Solar power plants

Some 40,000 small-scale solar power plants were to be installed for the underprivileged by the end of the past Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2023), Seyed Morteza Bakhtiari, head of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, said in October 2022.

A memorandum of understanding on the construction of 550,000 solar power plants has been signed between the Basij, the Ministry of Energy, the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, and the Welfare Organization, he explained.

A total of 110,000 solar panels would be allocated to the underprivileged under the coverage of the Relief Foundation and the Welfare Organization over the next five years.

He went on to state that the share of Relief Foundation was to provide 40,000 solar power plants and the welfare organization's contribution was 30,000.

In this line, the Ministry of Energy was committed to purchasing the electricity produced by the families for 20 years, he said, adding that producing electrical energy from renewable sources and helping to increase the national GDP were other positive consequences of implementing this plan.

Rural development plan

The Majlis (the Iranian Parliament) has approved a total of 31 trillion rials (nearly $103 million) for rural development in the budget bill for the current Iranian calendar year (March 2022-March 2023), IRIB reported on Sunday.

By allocating this amount of budget, the whole credit of comprehensive development plans will reach 42 trillion rials (about $84 million), Akbar Nikzad, head of the Housing Foundation, said.

The comprehensive development plans aim to develop rural areas in line with cultural, economic, and social conditions, as well as housing provision for the rural residents and improving environmental services.

“There are around 40,000 villages in the country with more than 20 households, for all of which comprehensive development plans have been approved every 10 years, and after this period, the village comprehensive development plans need to be reviewed.

The plans have so far been reviewed and re-implemented for 4,000 villages with more than 20 households in the country,” he stated.

MT/MG