CASH IS KING IN IRAN: Iranians PV development remains challenging, but speeds-up

29 GW cumulative PV capacity in MENAT can be expected by 2021. Iran does its own bit: The Iranian market has started to grow quickly. Several Iranian PV projects were completed within the last months under the Feed-in-Tariff program.

Tehran, November 27: Dr. Seyed Mohammad Sadeghzadeh, Deputy Minister and Head of

Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Organization (SATBA) welcomed 505 attendees at the
second Intersolar Summit in Tehran, Iran. In his keynote, he emphasized the importance of the
private sector and reliable Feed-In-Tariffs. If the community understands the advantages of
renewables and the procedure of FiT, people can influence the government and authorities to keep
structures reliable and reasonable.

300 MW renewable energies are constructed already, and further 800 MW are under construction
phase. In the ministers opinion, renewables will become competitive with traditional energy sources
soon. The plan is to install 1,000 MW renewables every year.

Markus Elsässer, founder of the Intersolar global exhibition series emphasized the progress in
reducing costs of solar power in the last years which led to 71 GW of global capacity additions in
2016. In his welcome speech the importance of renewable energies - especially for the employment.
In 2015 already, IRENA counted 2.8 mio. people employed in the sector of renewable energies. Dr.
Sadeghzadeh confirmed that in Iran, 15,000 people are already employed in the RE sector, and
100,000-200,000 more are possible within the next years.

In the morning session, Dr. Amiri Khamakani, Member of the Parliament, Ahmad Firoozi, Vice
Presidency for Science and Technology, Energy Department, Hamidreza Salehi, Energy Commission
of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, and J.Mohammad Nedjad, Deputy for Planning, (SATBA)
discussed proper policies to develop renewable energy in Iran.

Dr. Ahmad Khonsari, Partner, Watson Farley & Williams Legal Firm, Mohammad Rahmani, CEO,
Bayan Emrooz Law Firm, and M.T. Zafranchi Zadeh, Head of Private Sector Office, (SATBA), and
Behnam Khatami, Partner, Sabeti & Khatami Legal Firm explained legal challenges and regulatory
frameworks for domestic and international solar players. Some articles in the SATBA PPA including
assignment and step-in rights, and termination right are still not clearly defined.

Iran has made a huge progress from 2016 to 2017, but some challenges remain, as liability, securing
state land and farm and finance.

"Cash is King", stated Günter Grabner, Managing Director, KPV Solar. "The key for international
Investors is to establish a reliable way of monetary transactions". Together with Asghar Fakhrieh
Kashan, Deputy in International and Investment Affairs, Ministry of Roads & Urban Development,
Alireza Saedi Sarkhanloo, Member of Executive Board, Vice President of Foreign Investment,
National Development Fund of Islamic Republic of Iran, and Mostafa Beheshti Rouy, Member of
Executive Board, Bank Pasargad, he explained the difficulties of financing PV projects in Iran.
70 international attendees and 435 Iranian participants followed lively discussion rounds and a very
crowed exhibition with 21 tables top booths. 15 sponsors and 17 supporters and partners made the
second Intersolar Summit in Iran a very fruitful event. Companies as SUNEL, Noursun Energy, Kaco
and Krinner were in the focus of interest of attendees. Networking, getting-first-hand information,
and evaluation for a market entry, were the most often mentioned reasons of participation.

Mohammad H. Ghafouri, CEO of Aysa Ltd. and local partner of Intersolar concludes satisfied: "The
Intersolar Summit Iran is a good opportunity to network, but also to show the government the
importance to solve existing challenges. Since SATBAs foundation last year, and the demonstration
of the necessity to prepare a grid code for renewables at last years Intersolar grid connection panel,
a new movement has been started in SATBA. The first steps of the grid code development were
presented at this years summit."

For more information see: www.intersolar-summit.com/Iran

Featured Product

Raptor Maps - The integrated operating system for end-to-end solar management

Raptor Maps - The integrated operating system for end-to-end solar management

Operate autonomous drones and other robotics technology on your solar farms with Raptor Maps' robotics operations platform. Our end-to-end solution allows you to build and schedule data collection missions, to analyze collected data through our analytics engine, and to address identified issues through our remediation intelligence suite. From construction monitoring to substation inspections to SCADA-alert generation missions, Raptor Robotics gives your team unparalleled insights into the health and status of your project. Improve the safety, efficiency, and scale of your operations with Raptor Robotics.