National Energy Transition Plan implementation underway, says EWA president

TDT | Manama                                                

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com     

Bahrain has started implementing its National Energy Transition Plan, which aims to increase renewable energy resources’ share in the Kingdom to 5% of Bahrain’s total electricity generation by 2025, until advancing further to 20% by 2035.

This was announced by Electricity and Water Authority (EWA) President Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed.

As per the Ministerial Resolution 2/2017, regarding the connections of renewable energy resources to the distribution network, EWA has taken several measures, such as simplifying the applications’ connection-process and setting the procedures to facilitate the process of integrating renewable energy resources to EWA’s electricity network (through the latter issuance of Resolution 1/2019, amending Article 8, of Resolution 2/2017.

Kamal said that EWA has adopted the eligibility criteria for the enrollment of distributed renewable energy resources’ consultants and contractors.

Currently, there are 54 contractors and 93 consultants accredited for distributing renewable energy resources in the Kingdom.

He affirmed that EWA has adopted precise technical standards, to ensure optimum quality of the equipment and components utilised in renewable energy systems, in addition to considering the pertinent technical specifications through their consecutive inclusion to the government’s “Unified Guidebook of Building Permits Regulations”.

The EWA head also noted that EWA has coordinated with the Information and e-Government Authority (iGA) to digitise all the stages of renewable energy applications through the unified portal “Benayat”, an online system for the issuance of building permits in the Kingdom.

This ensures further simplifying and accelerating the applications’ process. Kamal quantified the recent growth of renewable resources in the Kingdom through general relevant statistics. A total of 303 applications have been submitted for the installation of renewable energy from residential, commercial and industrial sectors.

181 applications out of the 303 have been successfully commissioned and connected to EWA’s electricity distribution network, in which the total connected capacity exceeds 38 MW. Additionally, over 150 MW is expected to be installed by 2026.