By Arsen Vardanyan

The residents of Basen, a village in Armenia’s Shirak Province, have to burn animal dung or wood to heat their homes.

The village of 1,900 isn’t supplied with natural gas.

That all might change due to an experimental solar panel project which Basen Mayor Hamlet Petrosyan calls ‘fantastic’.

Right now, the village’s kindergarten has been outfitted with the solar panels to heat its vegetable hothouse. But Mayor Petrosyan says he has plans to expand the use of the technology in Basen.

Petrosyan first heard about the solar panel technology from the Shirak Provincial Authority. It had been tested and proved successful in a 2012 project to heat water in the Shaghik community. 

Petrosyan looked into the technology, liked what he saw, and decided to try it in Basen.

The mayor worked with a Rafayel Mkhitaryan, who runs the Third Nature NGO. They installed a water heater in the yard of the village municipality and a bath in the building.

Afterwards, the mayor teamed up with the Shirak branch of the Aarhus Environmental Center and decided to build the hothouse. The heat pumps were supplied by the OSCE office.

Basen residents now frequent the village public bathhouse for free, bathing in water heated by solar panels.

Petrosyan is confident that if private homes were outfitted with the solar panel technology, families could cut their heating costs, including water, by 30-40%.

The mayor said that one solar panel system costs around 120,000 AMD (US$300).

The hothouse will be officially opened at the end of June. Petrosyan is also quick to point out that the hothouse will have a nursery as well for seedlings and that the vegetable mater will be recycled into organic fertilizer.