COMSTECH and Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) UKM, Malaysia jointly organized a 3-day workshop, from 29 to 31 July 2019 to explore the issues and to share experiences and knowledge on renewable energy between energy professionals and academics of OIC countries.
The workshop gathered energy scientists, experts and young scholars from several OIC Member States. The workshop continued for 3 days and experts gave insights into new technological advancements, R&D and commercialization of renewable energy technologies.
The workshop was organized for capacity building in the light of the core mandate of COMSTECH to strengthen cooperation among OIC Member States in science and technology (S&T) and to enhance their capabilities through training in emerging areas.
The resource persons talked about following topics:
- Solar PV Technologies & Development
- Solar Thermal Technologies & Development
- Biomass Energy – Frontier Technologies
- Smart & Micro Grids
- Pico, Micro Hydro Power Plants
- Low Energy Architecture and Thermal Comfort
- Renewable Energy Installations, Policies, Pricing & Employability: An OIC Perspective
- Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Systems
- Wind Energy Technologies
- Marine Power Generation
- The Future of Energy Storage Systems
- Environmental & Economic Impacts of Solar PV Systems
On the final day, all the participants were given hands on training on HOMER Software. The HOMER Pro software is the global standard for optimizing micro-grid design, from village power and island utilities to grid-connected systems. It uses three powerful tools in one software, so that engineering and economics work side by side. The session was very interactive and all the participants learned the basics of using all the tools and dynamics of the software.
Resource persons and participants from Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, contributed to the workshop and shared their research and practices in the field of Renewable Energy (RE) technologies. A total of 38 participants from OIC Member Countries participated in the workshop other than Malaysia.
Students and researchers from different universities of Malaysia also presented their posters to showcase the advanced research being carried out in the field of renewable energy technologies. Their posters mainly focused on energy storage, fuel cells, integrated energy modelling, green buildings, etc.
On the concluding day, all the participants were taken to the SERI labs to showcase the research being carried out at their institute. SERI is already having many collaborative research projects with other energy institutes in OIC Member States.
Summarizing, the workshop explored the advanced research in renewable technologies, issues of cost and sustainability of various energy options, and challenges in the adoption of new technologies. The workshop focused on the analysis of different RE technologies, institutional policy and frameworks, and levelized costs of various RE technologies. The main suggestions to emerge from the workshop were:
- to develop strategies for integration of RE Technologies
- to have a sustainable energy mix
- to design support policies that promote the integration of green technologies
- to facilitate researchers from Member States for collaborations and funding opportunities
- to facilitate Member States in enhancing their institutional capacity building
- to develop a greener and sustainable transition to combat climate change
As a sideline activity, a brainstorming session on establishment of OIC Energy Working Group was conducted. Suggestions were invited from different stakeholders so as to formally establish the OIC Energy working group, in the third phase of this series of Energy workshops being organized by COMSTECH
