Meet the Photo voltaic Engineer Remodeling Lebanon’s Energy Grid

In Mira Daher’s residence nation of Lebanon, the nationwide grid gives energy for just a few hours a day. The nation’s state-owned vitality supplier, Electrical energy of Lebanon (EDL), has lengthy struggled to fulfill demand, and a crippling financial disaster that started in 2019 has worsened the scenario. Most residents now depend on privately owned diesel-powered turbines for the majority of their vitality wants.

However lately, the quickly falling value of photo voltaic panels has given Lebanese companies and households a compelling various, and the nation has seen a growth in non-public solar-power installations. Whole put in photo voltaic capability jumped practically eightfold between 2020 and 2022 to greater than 870 megawatts, primarily on account of off-grid rooftop installations.

Daher, head of tendering on the renewable-energy firm Earth Applied sciences, in Antelias, Lebanon, has performed an vital half on this ongoing revolution. She is in command of bidding for brand new photo voltaic initiatives, drawing up designs, and guaranteeing that they’re accurately applied on-site.

“I benefit from the selection and the problem of managing numerous initiatives, every with its personal distinctive necessities and technical hurdles,” she says. “And figuring out that my efforts additionally contribute to a sustainable future for Lebanon fills me with delight and motivates me quite a bit.”

An Early Mentor

Daher grew up within the southern Lebanese metropolis of Saida (additionally referred to as Sidon) the place her father labored as {an electrical} engineer within the development sector. His work helped to encourage her curiosity in expertise at a younger age, she says. When she was making use of for college, he inspired her to review electrical engineering too.

“My first mentor was my father,” says Daher. “He elevated my curiosity and fervour for expertise and engineering, and once I watched him work and resolve complicated issues, that motivated me to observe in his footsteps.”

In 2016, she enrolled at Beirut Arab College to review electrical and electronics engineering. When she graduated in 2019, Daher says, the nation’s photo voltaic growth was simply taking off, which prompted her to pursue a grasp’s diploma in energy and vitality, with a specialization in solar energy, on the American College of Beirut.

“My thesis targeting the vitality scenario in Lebanon and explored potential options to extend the reliance on renewable sources,” she says. “5 or 6 years in the past, photo voltaic techniques had excessive prices. However at this time the price [has] decreased quite a bit due to new applied sciences, and since there’s a whole lot of manufacturing of photo voltaic panels in China.”

Getting into the Workforce

After graduating in 2021, Daher began a job as a solar-energy engineer on the Beirut-based solar-power firm Mashriq Power, the place she was chargeable for growing designs and bids for brand new photo voltaic installations, much like her present position. It was a steep studying curve, Daher says, as a result of she needed to shortly choose up enterprise abilities, together with monetary modeling and contract negotiations. She additionally realized to cope with the practicalities of constructing massive photo voltaic developments, akin to website constraints and laws. In 2022, she joined Earth Applied sciences as a photo voltaic mission design engineer.

Varied organizations, together with Lebanese authorities and nongovernmental companies such because the United Nations, request bids for solar energy installations they need to construct—a course of referred to as tendering. Daher’s principal duty is to arrange and submit bids for these initiatives, however she additionally supervises their implementation.

Daher’s position requires her to keep up a broad base of data concerning the photo voltaic initiatives she oversees.Mira Daher

“I oversee all the mission cycle, from figuring out and managing tenders to designing, pricing, and implementing photo voltaic initiatives throughout residential, industrial, business, and utility sectors,” she says.

Step one within the course of is to go to the proposed set up website to find out the place photo voltaic panels must be positioned based mostly on the panorama and native climate circumstances. As soon as that is achieved, Daher and her crew give you a design for the plant. This includes determining what sorts of photo voltaic panels, inverters, and batteries will match the price range and easy methods to wire all of the elements collectively.

The crew runs simulations of the proposed plant to make sure that the design meets the shopper’s wants. Daher is then chargeable for negotiating with the shopper to ensure that the proposal fulfills their technical and budgetary necessities. As soon as the shopper has authorised the design, different groups oversee development of the plant, although Daher says she makes occasional website visits to make sure the design is being applied accurately.

Daher’s position requires her to have a strong understanding of all of the elements that go right into a photo voltaic plant, from the totally different manufacturers of energy electronics to the civil engineering required to construct supporting constructions for photo voltaic panels. “You must know every thing concerning the mission,” she says.

Photo voltaic Energy for Improvement

Earth Applied sciences operates throughout the Center East and Africa, however Daher says a lot of the photo voltaic installations she works on are in Lebanon. A few of the most fascinating have been development-focused initiatives funded by the U.N.

Daher led the U.N.-funded set up of photo voltaic panels at 9 hospitals, in addition to a mission that makes use of solar energy to pump water to folks in distant components of the nation. Extra not too long ago, she has began work on a photo voltaic and battery set up for avenue lighting within the city of Bourj Hammoud, which can permit outlets to remain open later and assist to spice up the native economic system. The initiatives she has overseen usually value round US $700,000 to $800,000.

However securing funding for renewable initiatives is an ongoing problem in Lebanon, says Daher, given the unsure financial scenario. Extra not too long ago, the nation was additionally rocked by the battle between Israel and the Lebanon-based paramilitary group Hezbollah. This resulted in widespread bombing of Beirut, the capital, and the nation’s southern areas final October and November.

“The 2 months of battle had been extremely difficult,” says Daher. “The setting was unsafe and stuffed with uncertainty, leaving us continually anxious about what the longer term held.”

Security considerations pressured her to relocate from her residence in Beirut to a village referred to as Ain El Jdideh. This meant she needed to drive about an hour and a half on unsafe roads to get to work. A number of of the most important initiatives she was engaged on had been additionally halted as they had been within the areas that bore the brunt of the battle. One U.N.-funded mission she labored on in Ansar, in southern Lebanon, was knocked offline when an adjoining constructing was destroyed.

“Regardless of these hardships, we persevered, and I’m grateful that the warfare has ended, permitting us to regain some stability and safety,” says Daher.

A Difficult However Fulfilling Profession

Regardless of these difficulties, Daher stays optimistic about the way forward for renewable vitality in Lebanon, and he or she says it may be a deeply rewarding profession. Breaking into the business requires a powerful instructional basis, although, so she recommends first pursuing a level targeted on energy techniques and renewable applied sciences.

The vitality sector is a male-dominated subject, says Daher, which may make it troublesome for ladies to seek out their footing. “I’ve typically encountered biases, stereotypes that may make it tougher to be taken critically, or to have my voice heard,” she provides. “Overcoming these obstacles requires resilience, confidence, and a dedication to demonstrating my experience and capabilities.”

It additionally requires a dedication to continuous studying, as a result of continued advances being made in solar-power expertise. “It’s essential to remain updated,” she says. “This subject is at all times evolving. On daily basis, you possibly can see a whole lot of new applied sciences.”