INTERVIEW WITH RAAD AL JIBOURI IN EGYPT

Link to Raad’s CV
raadaljibouri@gmail.com
Affiliated with HAMZA in Egypt
http://hamza.org/ProfessionalPhilosophy.aspx

“Sell the problem not the product”
​Find problems that Focused-Sun can solve

Waste Management in MENA Regions (Springer Water) 1st ed. 2020 Edition, Kindle Edition
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V264PR4?ref=KC_GS_GB_US

How to use CHP in the developing world
This is the red thread that connects our technology to our users
In Latin America, Africa, and India, these are our primary end users
These stories from the ground up are what will fuel the movement to fund our projects

1. Tell me about the technical requirements in Egyptian agriculture (Energy, Power, Heat, etc)... rural towns or villages, business and town Hotel, as well as gated community 
Notes: 
https://sdgs.un.org/goals

11 of the 17 goals in the UN SDGs sustainable development goals - can be reached from one CSP plant if we built it in a poor village.
Majority  of Egypt - 4,655 villages are very poor
Energy infrastructure is limited in those remote villages
100 Million people use 7% of the land near the River Nile
The farmers in the Nile Delta in the north are in a very crowded area.
The West and East deserts, East desert by the Red Sea.
Same environment by the north of Sudan - important to do something for these 

What is the process for setting up power and water? 
Clinic, Small farms, Cooling or chilling, Clean water (desal)
Notes:

The microgrid setting up power (and water) from Dr. Buckley is seen by Raad as a strong option.
Paying back the money in 4-5 years with a profitable payback over 20-30 years for the system lifetime.
Raad is Iraqian Consultant Engineer and is able to see the Egyptian ecosystem from an outsider’s perspective
People want to see something work as a prototype before investing, this is not only in Egypt
Other applications like towers for mobile and GSM can be powered by a FS Microgrid.

Special environment is needed, with certain ambient temperature
The concentrate solar thermal is more appropriate in these circumstances
Rene and Raad have been working together with GSM in the Middle East
A typical farm in the Gulf - there is no more water and they want Greenhouses
To power these and provide water they will need to solve some problems to install a plant
The typical farm will need chillers to adapt the ambient temperature for the plants
The communication with Raad happens within days and they are willing to invest

2. What are problems to solve in providing agricultural services where it is needed most?  What needs do communities have?
Notes: 
Raad has lived in Egypt since 2014.  In 2015, Egypt had the most experimental land use for this technology.  Frank Shuman installed the first parabolic concentrated solar in 1913.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Frank_Shuman

There are over 8 hours of usable sunlight in Egypt per day, making the concentrated solar technology most effective to produce a large amount of usable power and heat.

33 degrees Celsius ambient temperature is the average in the Egyptian and Iraqi weather systems.  The efficiency of PV becomes less than 10 % at higher temperatures, http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2013/ph240/alshakhs2/

 like 45 or  50 degrees Celsius for more than 3  months annually . (June to September)

The LCOE, inverse in proportion to the time of energy production, in the graphs above show the importance, in the third graph, of energy storage to further reduce costs  i.e. LCOE.  With the FS Microgrid method of heat storage, this is the most efficient storage method in the middleast market with more than 33 degree average ambient temperature.

3. How much electricity, heat, power, clean water, and cooling do agricultural communities use?
Notes: 

Interconnections between  multi-country  grids can allow peak hour prices to be reduced by storing thermal energy generated by coal, nuclear, syngas, CSP etc. and other energy sources at low electricity demand times or when generation becomes more than load. 

Also thermal batteries make renewable sources of energy and power even more valuable   because it can reduce the problems related to transmission of electricity in a wide range grid, like frequency fluctuation, absence of Inertia in most renewable energy sources, and sudden power generation drop.   

Manufacturing of thermal batteries locally  will allow the prices based on the volume to remain affordable.  With heat storage the cost will go down to the point where energy can be stored almost infinitely.  The amount of energy used is currently based on the power cost and availability of a grid, which is often absent.

This means that wood and coal are used for cooking and heating.  Electricity is not often used in these remote areas, unless they have a generator.  Using Fossil Fuel for generators is very expensive.

In 2016 I had a chance to visit Wahat (Oasis) . I found residents of the west desert (near Libyan borders) 150-200 km away from Cairo have to pay three times the normal prices of the gasoline and diesel fuel in Cairo or other major cities. mainly because the roads were in a bad condition. And there is no pipe line to distribute and supply oil products to the remote areas  The cost of electricity generation can be reduced by using renewable source off-grid generation   to solve  this problem.

4. What opportunities do you see with renewable energy in the community? In rural areas? At what capacity?

Farms (rural and urban)
The  clean cooking is not available in the rural area means the people use coal or wood etc. for this purpose, and this leads to deforestation, pollution, and many health problems.  also effect how hot water is needed in farming to clean equipment.
The renewable energy capacity to solve this problem would spread from farm to customers.

Cell towers
If we know the load that would be required for the towers to provide cellular service to rural areas, we could build the infrastructure.  The backup power from heat storage to power and even generators and their cost would be estimated in the load and pricing for remote cell towers.

Water (Oil industry waste and clean water desal)
There is another approach in industries with heavy energy consumption, normal need it for heating the products to a high temperature like cement, steel, glass and ceramic … etc. At the end of the production cycle we need to dissipate this huge amount of thermal energy in the outer air, the best thing we can do is what we called Heat Recovery to store some of this heat dissipation in thermal batteries, and then convert it to electricity or else to use it again. If we reserve 25% of the energy (as an example) this means we have stored a clean energy that can be produced without more Carbon Emission, and this principle according to Kyoto Protocol means you can either sell it to another industry or use it as a tax-cut for you. This is called Carbon Emission Credit (CER), and we can mix this heat recovery with CSP collectors to increase the productivity and proftability

Funding
Do we know about grant opportunities with industrial organizations?  
The Carbon Credits are a very useful way to offset taxes.  Tax cuts are most beneficial.

Grants for agricultural and community leaders to meet industry needs?
There are only limited sources of electricity and limited industries to fund.

What sources of funding are available for communities and their projects?
For 1 MWh microgrid plant , means (theoretically)  8,760,000 kW of electricity a year and 0.000709 metric tons CO2/kWh of carbon emission only 6211 of metric tons cost $25/metric tons this means around 155,271 $/year to offset. 

5. What issues do you face with electricity? Downtime if any? What temporary solutions did you use? How was it solved?
Notes: 

The downtime of energy is total if the cost of power is too prohibitive with gas and diesel generators.  Rural communities will often resort to coal and wood for cooking and heat, forgoing the need for electricity.  With no remote cellular phone towers, there is no need for electricity.

The younger generations are demanding access to electricity and they will push the market in the direction of finding the resources to provide rural cell phone towers and the affordable solutions to charge electrical devices for modern living.

Clean cooking technology will use either gas or electricity, but most countries in Africa and areas of India will not use these cleaner technologies.  The World Bank states that an indicator for the clean cooking is one way to prevent health issues that come from coal and burning wood, as well as environmental concerns.

6. How is the cost of renewable energy viewed in your industry? Agricultural communities and their constituents
Notes: 

The cost of energy in general is crippling, so much so that the use of wood for heat and cooking causes deforestation, which further adds to the environmental concerns and health concerns when the vegetation in trees can’t process the carbon dioxide back into oxygen.

The thermal batteries are viewed as a very efficient and affordable solution.  Spare parts from Fiats are used to melt down to iron.  Different minerals, each month, 1.5 million in local currency, $100,000 per month for electricity.  If you save  20% of the heat dissipated with a spiral tube with a suitable heat transfer fluid inside, on its way through the chimney to get back the heat and store it in thermal batteries, this is a very attractive option for the first experiment in this track happening now.

7. What barriers do you have to adopt renewable energy?
Notes: 

Before  one week ago, Raad Al Jibouri finished a chapter to very well known research-center for a think tank in Egypt. That study contribution will be published soon as a paper to concern the decision maker in   Africa affairs about renewable energy.  

There are five grids in Africa in the chapter that Raad is providing. shown in the fig attached word document. These grids can be united.  2021 Tracking SDG 7 in the Energy Progress Report.  

All the countries by the Red Sea in the East have grids.  All the countries in the West on the Atlantic Ocean have electricity grids.