December 26, 2022 – Mayotte Wire

December 26, 2022December 27, 2022

AT CHRISTMAS, POPE URGES END TO ‘SENSELESS’ UKRAINE WAR

The head of the Catholic Church addressed thousands of people gathered in St Peter’s Square, some of them holding Ukrainian flags, before delivering the “Urbi et Orbi” blessing (“to the city and the world”).

A call to peace is traditionally the focus of the pope’s message at Christmas, the holiday marking the birth of Christ, which he delivers from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica and is broadcast live worldwide.

The 86-year-old on Sunday first turned to “our Ukrainian brothers and sisters who are experiencing this Christmas in the dark and cold, far from their homes”.

“May the Lord inspire us to offer concrete gestures of solidarity to assist all those who are suffering, and may he enlighten the minds of those who have the power to silence the thunder of weapons and put an immediate end to this senseless war!” he said.

“Tragically, we prefer to heed other counsels, dictated by worldly ways of thinking,” he added, recalling “with sorrow” that “the icy winds of war continue to buffet humanity”.

‘FOOD AS A WEAPON’

“Our time is experiencing a grave famine of peace also in other regions and other theatres of this third world war,” he said.

Francis referenced numerous countries in difficulty this Christmas, whether due to conflict or another crisis, from Afghanistan to Yemen, Syria, Myanmar, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon and Haiti.

For the first time, he also called for “reconciliation” in Iran, rocked by women-led protests for the past three months.

The pope has called for peace in Ukraine ever since Russia invaded its neighbour in February, condemning the war but seeking to maintain a delicate dialogue with Moscow.

However, he has been criticised in some quarters for not being more explicit in blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a magazine interview published last month, the Argentine pontiff denounced the cruelty of Russia’s troops in Ukraine, drawing a formal protest from Moscow.

On Sunday, the pope also urged those celebrating Christmas to remember those “who go hungry while huge amounts of food daily go to waste and resources are being spent on weapons”.

“The war in Ukraine has further aggravated this situation, putting entire peoples at risk of famine, especially in Afghanistan and in the countries of the Horn of Africa,” he said.

“We know that every war causes hunger and exploits food as a weapon, hindering its distribution to people already suffering.

“On this day, let us learn from the Prince of Peace (Christ) and, starting with those who hold political responsibilities, commit ourselves to making food solely an instrument of peace.”

MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

On Saturday evening, the pope led the traditional Christmas Eve mass at St Peter’s Basilica, using a wheelchair as he continues to struggle with knee pain.

He prayed for “the children devoured by wars, poverty and injustice” and lamented that “men hungry for power and money swallow up their loved ones, their brothers”.

He called on people to “abandon the warmth of worldliness” and “rediscover the meaning of Christmas” in the face of “consumerism”, advocating for a Church that serves the poor.

The Vatican put the crowd Sunday at 70,000, while 7,000 people attended Saturday evening’s mass, with more following the service on screens outside.

“It’s very inspiring to be here with all these people,” Victoria Machado, who travelled with her family to the Vatican from Mexico, told AFP.

“We’re happy and moved to see the pope, even if we’re outside, and to feel this connection between each other,” the 19-year-old added.

Julie, a 50-year-old who manages a business in France, said the pope was a “very humble man, I think he’s capable of offering a message of peace and trying to unite people and ease tensions”.

Source: National News Agency

December 26, 2022December 27, 2022

UN says to continue engagement with Burkina Faso after senior official’s expulsion

UNITED NATIONS— The United Nations intends to continue to engage with the Burkina Faso government after a senior UN official was declared as “persona non grata” by the authorities of the West African country, a UN spokesman said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has “learned with regret” that the transitional government of Burkina Faso declared Barbara Manzi, UN resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator in the country, as “persona non grata,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN chief, said in a statement.

The Burkina Faso government on Friday made the declaration and asked Manzi to leave the country immediately.

The statement issued by Dujarric emphasized that the doctrine of persona non grata does not apply to UN officials.

Under Article 100 and 101 of the United Nations Charter, UN staff members are appointed by the Secretary-General, responsible only to the organization, and UN member states “undertake to respect their exclusively international character,” the statement said.

In accordance with Article 105 of the UN Charter, the United Nations is accorded privileges and immunities, including the right for its staff members to remain in Burkina Faso in order to perform their functions on behalf of the organization, added the statement.

Only the Secretary-General has the authority to decide, after careful investigation, with respect to the withdrawal of any UN official, said the statement.

“The Secretary-General reiterates the commitment of the United Nations to continue to engage with the transitional authorities in Burkina Faso to support the country and its people,” the statement said.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

December 26, 2022December 27, 2022

Two Gambian Military Officers Arrested in Connection with Failed Coup

Two Gambian military officers linked to an alleged plot to overthrow the government of President Adama Barrow have been arrested over the weekend, Gambia’s government spokesperson said Monday.

The government said Dec. 21 that a group of soldiers had been arrested in connection with an attempt to stage a coup in the tiny West African nation of 2.5 million people, which is almost surrounded by Senegal.

“Two more soldiers linked to the alleged foiled coup plot were arrested over the weekend and are helping investigators unearth allegations of plans to overthrow the government,” Ebrima Sankareh, the government’s spokesperson said in a statement.

He said a second lieutenant of the Gambian infantry, and a captain from the military intelligence and security unit were arrested Saturday and Sunday respectively, while the search for other alleged plotters was ongoing.

Seven people, including two officers and five soldiers, have so far been arrested in connection with the alleged plot that has been condemned by leaders of the West and Central Africa region.

The region has witnessed six successful military coups, and a violent attempted coup since 2020, raising concerns over the backslide of democracy in a region that had been seen to be making progress in shedding its ‘coup belt’ moniker.

Source: Voice of America

December 26, 2022

Huawei Unveils Top 10 Trends of Smart PV for a Greener Future

SHENZHEN, China, Dec. 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Huawei held the Top 10 Trends of Smart PV (photovoltaic) conference, with the theme of ”Accelerating Solar as a Major Energy Source”. At the conference, Chen Guoguang, President of Huawei Smart PV+ESS Business, shared Huawei’s insights on the 10 trends of Smart PV from the perspectives of multi-scenario collaboration, digital transformation, and enhanced safety.

As the proportion of renewable energy keeps increasing, the PV industry acquired a booming growth, yet, the industry still faces many challenges, including how to continue reducing the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), how to improve the O&M efficiency, how to maintain power grid stability as more renewable energy are feeding in, and how to ensure end-to-end system safety.

(PRNewsfoto/Huawei)

“Amid the rapid growth of the PV industry, these challenges also bring opportunities.” said Chen Guoguang. As a forward-looking enterprise, Huawei is keen to sharing our insights and thinking with our partners, as well as organizations and individuals who are interested in green and sustainable development.

Trend 1: PV+ESS Generator

As more renewable energy is feeding into power grids, various complex technical problems arise in terms of system stability, power balance, and power quality.

(PRNewsfoto/Huawei)

Therefore, a new control mode is needed to increase active/reactive power control and response capability, and actively mitigate frequency and voltage fluctuations. With the integration of PV and ESS as well as the Grid Forming technology, we can build ‘Smart PV+ESS Generators’ that use voltage source control instead of current source control, provides strong inertia support, transient voltage stabilization, and fault ride-through capabilities. This will transform PV from grid following to grid forming, helping increase PV feed-in.

A milestone in practice of these technologies was the Red Sea project in Saudi Arabia, which Huawei provided a complete set of solution including smart PV controller, lithium battery energy storage system (BESS) as one of the major partners. This project uses 400 MW PV and 1.3 GWh ESS to support the power grid which replaces traditional diesel generators and provides clean and stable power for 1 million people, building the world’s first city powered by 100% renewable energy.

Trend 2: High Density and Reliability

High power and reliability of equipment in PV plants will be the trend. Take PV inverters as an example, nowadays, the DC voltage of inverters is increased from 1100 V to 1500 V. With the application of new materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), as well as the full integration of digital, power electronics, and thermal management technologies, it is estimated that the power density of inverters will increase by about 50% in the next five years, and the high reliability can be maintained.

The 2.2 GW PV plant in Qinghai, China is 3100 m above sea level and has 9216 Huawei Smart PV Controllers (inverters) running stably in this harsh environment. The total availability hours of Huawei inverters exceed 20 million hours, and the availability reaches 99.999%.

Trend 3: Module-Level Power Electronics (MLPE)

Driven by industry policies and technology advancement, distributed PV has witnessed vigorous development in recent years. We are facing challenges such as how to improve the utilization of rooftop resources, ensure high energy yield, and how to ensure the PV+ESS system safety. Therefore, more refined management is a must.

(PRNewsfoto/Huawei)

In a PV system, module-level power electronics (MLPE) refer to power electronic equipment that can perform refined control on one or more PV modules, including micro inverters, power optimizers, and disconnectors. MLPE brings unique values such as module-level power generation, monitoring, and safe shutdown. As PV systems are becoming safer and more intelligent, the penetration rate of MLPE in the distributed PV market is expected to reach 20% to 30% by 2027.

Trend 4: String Energy Storage

Compared with traditional centralized ESS solutions, the Smart String ESS solution adopts a distributed architecture and modular design. It uses innovative technologies and digital intelligent management to optimize energy at the battery pack level and control energy at the rack level. This results in more discharge energy, optimal investment, simple O&M, as well as safety and reliability throughout the lifecycle of the ESS.

(PRNewsfoto/Huawei)

In 2022, in the 200 MW/200 MWh ESS project in Singapore for the purpose of frequency regulation and spinning reserve, the largest BESS project in Southeast Asia, the Smart String ESS implements refined charge and discharge management to achieve constant power output for a longer time and ensure frequency regulation benefits. In addition, the automatic SOC calibration function at the battery pack level reduces labor costs and greatly improves O&M efficiency.

Trend 5: Cell-Level Refined Management

Similar to PV systems shifting towards MLPE, lithium BESSs are set to develop towards smaller management level. Only refined management at battery cell level can better cope with the efficiency and safety problems. Currently, the traditional battery management system (BMS) can only summarize and analyze limited data, and it is almost impossible to detect faults and generate warnings in the early stage. Therefore, BMS needs to be more sensitive, intelligent, and even predictive. This depends on the collection, computing, and processing of a large amount of data, and AI technologies to find the optimal operating mode and make forecasts.

(PRNewsfoto/Huawei)

Trend 6: PV+ESS+Grid Integration

On the power generation side, we see more and more practices of building clean energy bases of PV+ESS that supply electricity to load centers through UHV power transmission lines. On the power consumption side, virtual power plants (VPPs) become increasingly popular in many countries. VPPs combine massive distributed PV systems, ESSs, and controllable loads, and implement flexible scheduling to power generation units and storage units to achieve peak shaving etc.

Therefore, building a stable energy system that integrates the PV+ESS+Grid to support PV power supply and feed-in to grid will become a key measure to ensure energy security. We can integrate digital, power electronics, and energy storage technologies to achieve multi-energy complementation. Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) can intelligently manage, operate, and trade power of massive distributed PV+ESS systems thru multiple technologies including 5G, AI, and cloud technologies, which will come into practice in more countries.

Trend 7: Upgraded Safety

Safety is the cornerstone of the PV & ESS industry development. This requires us to systematically consider all scenarios and links and fully integrate power electronics, electrochemical, thermal management, and digital technologies to upgrade system safety. In a PV plant, faults caused by the DC side account for more than 70% of all faults. Therefore, the inverter needs to support smart string disconnection and automatic connector detection. In distributed PV scenario, the AFCI (Arc Fault Circuit Breaker) function will become a standard configuration, and the module-level rapid shutdown function will ensure the safety of maintenance personnel and firefighters. In ESS scenario, multiple technologies, such as power electronics, cloud, and AI, need to be used to implement refined management of ESS from battery cells to whole system. The traditional protection mode based on passive response and physical isolation is changed to active automatic protection, implementing multi-dimensional safety design from hardware to software and from structure to algorithm.

(PRNewsfoto/Huawei)

Trend 8: Security and Trustworthiness

In addition to bringing benefits, PV systems also have various risks, including equipment safety and information security. Equipment safety risks mainly refer to the shutdown caused by faults. Information security risks refer to external network attacks. To cope with these challenges and threats, enterprises and organizations need to establish a complete set of “security and trustworthiness” management mechanisms, including the reliability, availability, security, and resilience of systems and devices. We also need to implement protection for personal and environmental safety as well as data privacy.

Trend 9: Digitalization

Conventional PV plants have a large amount of equipment and lack information collection and reporting channels. Most of the equipment cannot ‘communicate’ with each other which is very difficult to implement refined management.

(PRNewsfoto/Huawei)

With the introduction of advanced digital technologies such as 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, sensing technologies, and big data, PV plants can send and receive information, using “bits” (information flows) to manage “watts” (energy flows). The entire link of generation-transmission-storage-distribution-consumption is visible, manageable, and controllable.

Trend 10: AI Application

As the energy industry moves towards an era of data, how to better collect, utilize, and maximize the value of data has become one of the top concerns of the entire industry.

(PRNewsfoto/Huawei)

AI technologies can be widely applied to renewable energy fields, and play an indispensable role in the entire lifecycle of PV+ESS, including manufacturing, construction, O&M, optimization, and operation. The convergence of AI and technologies such as cloud computing and big data is deepening, and the tool chain focusing on data processing, model training, deployment and operation, and safety monitoring will be enriched. In the renewable energy field, AI, like power electronics and digital technologies, will drive profound industry transformation.

At the end, Chen Guoguang remarked that the converged applications of 5G, cloud, and AI are shaping a world where all things can sense, all things are connected, and all things are intelligent. It is coming faster than we think. Huawei identifies the top 10 trends of the PV industry and describes a green and intelligent world in the near future. We hope that people from all walks of life can join hands to achieve the goals of carbon neutrality and build a greener, better future.

(PRNewsfoto/Huawei)

December 26, 2022

China maximumly reduces COVID-19’s impacts on economic, social development

BEIJING, Dec. 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — A report from People’s Daily: As China optimizes its pandemic response measures, regions across the country have resumed work, industrial production and commercial activities.

A tunnel of the Shenyang-Baishan high-speed railway in Baishan city, northeast China’s Jilin province has resumed construction; in the Haikou International Duty Free City in south China’s Hainan province, consumers are lining up in front of cashiers; an enterprise in Changde, central China’s Hunan province recently received a 20-million-yuan ($2.87 million) export order…

In 2020, China became the first major economy to attain positive economic growth; in 2021, the country’s GDP topped 114 trillion yuan, with its two-year average growth standing at 5.1 percent; this year, the Chinese economy withstood pressure and kept consolidating the trend of recovery.

Practices proved that China has explored a path that well coordinates pandemic control and economic and social development. The country has to the maximum extent protected people’s lives and health, and reduced the impacts from COVID-19 on economic and social development to the fullest.

Coping with COVID-19 is a major test of the century, in which the most important thing is to ensure the safety of the people while advancing economy and livelihood. In the recent three years, China has constantly adjusted and optimized its prevention and control measures in accordance with the new features of the variants and the development of the pandemic.

Over the recent three years, China has offered over a trillion yuan in tax relief for individual businesses and seen its annual grain output standing at more than 650 billion kilograms. It has launched a series of signature projects to promote high-quality development and released domestic demand through halving vehicle purchase tax and issuing consumption coupons.

China has coped with difficulties with science-based policies. It front-loaded and strengthened macro policies and accelerated the targeted implementation of micro policies, which boosted the confidence and relieved the burden of market entities. The country’s efforts stabilized the general economic and social development and realized economic recovery.

Now China has come to a new stage of pandemic response and optimized its control measures in accordance with the dynamics of COVID-19. It is earnestly implementing the new control measures, ensuring medical supply and services for the people, focusing on the control work for seniors and people with underlying diseases, ensuring people’s health and preventing patients from developing critical symptoms.

At present, the momentum for China’s rapid economic rebound is being accumulated and released. The Chinese economy enjoys strong resilience, huge potential and strong vitality. The fundamentals sustaining China’s long-term economic growth remain unchanged, and so do the factors supporting the country’s high-quality development.

It is believed that as China further implements its new COVID-19 response measures and the country’s policies to stabilize its economy continue taking effect, China’s economic and social vitality will be released to the maximum extent, contributing to the country’s economic recovery.