In Tula, northern Lebanon, a group of volunteers worked to raise $100,000 from expatriates for a solar power generation project to power the city, in light of the suffocating electricity crisis across Lebanon that has been going on for two years.
“In the current situation, solar energy is no longer just an alternative, it has become a necessity,” engineer Eli Greig, one of the project’s volunteers, told AFP.
Last winter, Tula residents received only three hours of electricity a day from private generators, and if they were lucky, then another hour or two from power lines.
The residents of the town decided to move to secure energy, realizing that the Lebanese state and its bankrupt and dysfunctional institutions would not lift a finger, so they contacted their expatriate relatives, who provided over one hundred thousand dollars in funding, which allowed the installation of 185 panels with devices necessary for generating electricity and, in agreement with the municipality, the panels were connected to the electrical network. It belongs to a private generator for distributing electricity to the village houses, and the village currently uses electricity for 17 hours a day.
With fuel prices rising due to the phasing out of government subsidies since last year, Lebanese are no longer able to pay generator bills, whose owners have in turn resorted to rationing.
