Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: A three-day international conference and exhibition on “Renewable Energy Technologies” concluded on Thursday in Islamabad.

The event was jointly organised by the Pakistan Council of Renewable Energy Technologies, COMSATS and ISESCO.

The conference called for adopting all available techniques to produce renewable energy in order to cope with the energy shortfall in the country. The event in its nine technical sessions and a posters’ exhibition session touched upon important topics related to the theme of the event.

The speakers and experts representing various Pakistani universities, public sector organisations, industry, and development sector made their presentations on relevant topics. The local participants made presentations on production and use of by-hydrogen, as a renewable energy option, use of solar photovoltaic in agriculture; domestic techniques for producing solar electricity; advanced techniques for recycling to produce energy from waste energy, whereas the other presentations touched upon financial mechanism of micro-hydro programme in Chitral and its sustainability, explored the role of advance energy technologies for addressing the current energy crises.

The current techniques and technologies to utilise wind and solar energy, as well as the challenges involved in their use were also reviewed.

The foreign speakers of the event belonged to Industrial Research and Consultancy Centre, Sudan; Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan; Iranian Research Organisation for Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran; Royal Scientific Society, Jordan; Qorvo, Inc, USA; King Design Co Ltd, Taiwan; and National Research Centre, Egypt.

The participants deliberated on a number of important topics including advances on biomass pyrolysis for the production of bio-diesel; materials and techniques used in solar cells to improve their efficiency; making renewable energy more cost-effective by lowering their the levelised cost of electricity; capacity building in wind energy and solar power and the use of micro-alga in different sectors including energy, food, fertilizers, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and wastewater treatment. The event was given a becoming end with a panel discussion, which was chaired by Dr Iqbal Chaudhry of Qorvo, Inc, Greensboro, USA, and co-chaired by Nadeem Zakir, head of Photovoltaic Division, PCRET.