Diyarbakır intercity bus station meets energy demand from solar plant

DİYARBAKIR - Doğan News Agency

A solar power plant has been established in the eastern province of Diyarbakır by the city’s metropolitan municipality to meet its intercity bus station’s energy needs.

Electricity from this solar power plant, which has been built at the open car park of the bus station, will be used to meet the station’s energy demand and sold to the city’s electricity distribution company DEDAŞ to create extra revenue to the municipality, according to local authorities. 

Gültan Kışanak, the former Diyarbakır metropolitan municipality who was arrested in October 2016, started the project last June. Cumali Atilla, an Ankara-appointed trustee mayor, followed through on the project and a total of 2,460 solar panels, each of which has 265 watts of installed power, were built. 

The Diyarbakır intercity bus station has thus become Turkey’s first station which meets all of its energy needs from solar power.

Ramazan Savaş, the head of the metropolitan municipality’s environmental protection unit, said the project cost nearly 4 million Turkish liras ($1.1 million) and this cost is expected to be covered in the next four years through revenue from electricity sales. 

He also added that there are plans to build a larger solar power plant on other land owned by the municipality, as well as a biogas facility to produce electricity and diminish the city’s carbon footprint.