Solar Panel Boom Helping to Power N. Korean Homes

Panels sold openly

Once reserved for Workers' Party cadres, solar panels and voltage stabilizers are now sold openly both in markets and in the hardware sections of Pyongyang department stores, where small 20-watt panels cost just under 350,000 won ($44 at the widely used black market exchange rate, where a dollar is worth about 8,000 won, instead of the official 96 won).

Obtaining accurate data from North Korea is difficult, but roughly 10 percent to 15 percent of urban apartments in a series of recent photographs in North Korean cities obtained by Reuters appeared to have small solar panels attached to windows or balconies.

Whether that number translates nationally is unclear, but regular visitors have noted a significant increase in solar panel use across the country in recent months, either in urban areas or in one case in the backyard vegetable plot of a rural house.

Private solar panels are not illegal in authoritarian North Korea, where in recent years the government has tacitly allowed greater economic freedoms. However, some local authorities may demand a bribe for permission to install them, a defector said.

Electricity supply in North Korea is prioritized for factories or areas of political importance, but those with money or connections are often able to tap those lines illegally.

The country could be generating about 33 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, or just 7 percent of what South Korea generates, according to Tristan Webb, a former British Foreign Office analyst who visited North Korean power plants in 2013.

North Korea suffers from dry winters where Siberian winds can keep temperatures below freezing for months. The state exports much of its mined coal and relies heavily on hydropower, meaning electricity is in especially short supply in winter.

"We can heat our homes with a heater powered by a solar panel,'' said Kim Yeong-mi, a North Korean defector who came to the South in 2012.

Pyongyang is home to a solar panel factory, and state propaganda has said the technology is in "effective use'' in solar-powered lamp posts in other cities.

North Korea is trying to use renewable energy to "make up the shortage of electricity,'' state media said Tuesday.

"Develop and make effective use of wind, tidal, geothermal and solar energy!'' was one of a barrage of slogans released by the ruling party in February.

Билет №6

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