America's North Shore Journal

Mahdi Jonny, an elec­tri­cal engi­neer with the Joint Projects Man­age­ment Office, 2^nd Brigade Com­bat Team, 1^st Infantry Divi­sion, checks the wiring on a series of solar pan­els on the roof of the New Iraq Health Clinic in Gaza­liyah, Aug. 12. Photo by Sgt. Joshua Ris­ner, Multi-National Divi­sion – Baghdad.

The roof of the New Iraq Health Clinic here in the Gaza­liyah dis­trict looks a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the build­ings sur­round­ing it. Two rows of solar pan­els, col­lect­ing the boun­ti­ful Mesopotamian sun­light, now pro­vide the building's power through solar pow­ered bat­tery systems.

The addi­tion is part of an ongo­ing effort by the Joint Projects Man­age­ment Office (JPMO) of 2^nd Brigade Com­bat Team, 1^st Infantry Divi­sion, accord­ing to Maj. Andrew Attar, from Bris­tol, Conn., the JPMO chief.

"The solar panel project started in April, but like most of the clin­ics in Bagh­dad, var­i­ous Amer­i­can fund­ing sources have gone into it over the years," said Attar. "The solar pan­els help to aug­ment the elec­tri­cal grid which is improv­ing every day but still not con­sis­tent enough for a med­ical facility."

Solar power has greatly improved oper­a­tions inside the clinic, which ser­vices the local area, accord­ing to Attar.

"It pretty much pow­ers the entire clinic," he said. "We've had to reduce the num­ber of refrig­er­ated air con­di­tion­ing units, but in their place we put air units that have less energy needs and still pro­vide cool air."

The JPMO inspected the solar power sys­tem to ensure that it was work­ing effi­ciently and cor­rectly, Attar explained.

"We inspected the [solar] pan­els but more impor­tantly we inspected the inter­nal wiring within the clinic to make sure the loads are prop­erly seg­re­gated," he said. "Some rooms require a lot of energy, some rooms require very lit­tle energy, so that is one of the fin­ish­ing touches — if it's not done right, it's a prob­lem. We're mak­ing sure that a room requir­ing a lot of energy has the proper wiring so it can han­dle the load."

Attar added that the qual­ity assurance/quality con­trol aspect of the project is equally important.

"Our job is to make sure that the money that the Amer­i­can tax pay­ers are spend­ing is used in accor­dance with the state­ment of work agreed upon by us and the con­trac­tors," he said. "We don't pay until the work's done right."

The New Iraq Health Clinic is the third clinic in Bagh­dad to receive solar pow­ered bat­tery sys­tems, accord­ing to Attar.

DVIDS
By Sgt. Joshua Risner