Greek Military installations that have been out of use for some time are now being placed in the centre of the government’s attention. The government has been wanting to to optimize all available facilities in every possible manner.
Recently, three old military camps of Veroia were turned into museums. In this way, the Greek state hopes to render easier the overall lofty attempts of exporting electricity into Europe, which will be produced by solar energy on Greek grounds.
Monday (5.9.2011), the Minister for the Environment, Energy and Climate Change, Mr. Papaconstantinou, presented during the opening of the 26th EU PVSEC conference in Hamburg the general outline of the “Project Helios” and proposed using old military facilities in order to make land available to solar developers.
Since the installation would cover 200 square kilometers, the government plans on granting local land both to German and other photovoltaic (PV) associations through simplified and fast procedures, so as to install big PV plants that will enable Greece to house 2.2 gigawats (GW) by 2020 with this expanding to the 10 GW by 2050.
Out of use military camps of Northern Greece are therefore seen as an ideal solution to the problem of housing the power plants, while the Greek government is in conversations of acquiring the inactive mines of PPC S.A. (DEH) for the same cause.
By following this truly ambitious and vast scale idea, Greece will be able to be creative in how it boosts its economy and creates new jobs while the necessary connections and contracts will conduct energy throughout the Continent.
Germany is one of the global leaders in solar PVs and is nowadays in search of alternative approaches to sourcing renewable power, since it tries to abandon nuclear power after the public’s strong opposition to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan last March.
Greece, on the other hand, may be poor in financial resources but is very rich in sunlight (300 days of sunshine a year, which equals to almost 50% more sun radiation than Germany) and could therefore become a big solar power producer of the future.
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