Electrical Energy Empowerment for Our Global Neighbours

Excerpted from the New York Times:

As small-scale renewable energy becomes cheaper, more reliable and more efficient, it is providing the first drops of modern power to people who live far from slow-growing electricity grids and fuel pipelines in developing countries. Although dwarfed by the big renewable energy projects that many industrialized countries are embracing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, these tiny systems are playing an epic, transformative role.

...“You leapfrog over the need for fixed lines,” said Adam Kendall, head of the sub-Saharan Africa power practice for McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm. “Renewable energy becomes more and more important in less and less developed markets.”

...The United Nations estimates that 1.5 billion people across the globe still live without electricity, including 85 percent of Kenyans, and that three billion still cook and heat with primitive fuels like wood or charcoal.

...With the advent of cheap solar panels and high-efficiency LED lights, which can light a room with just 4 watts of power instead of 60, these small solar systems now deliver useful electricity at a price that even the poor can afford, he noted. “You’re seeing herders in Inner Mongolia with solar cells on top of their yurts”...

...In addition to these small solar projects, renewable energy technologies designed for the poor include simple subterranean biogas chambers that make fuel and electricity from the manure of a few cows, and “mini” hydroelectric dams that can harness the power of a local river for an entire village.

“Off-grid is the answer for the poor. But people who control funding need to see this as a viable option.”

Morocco provides subsidized solar home systems at a cost of $100 each to remote rural areas where expanding the national grid is not cost-effective.

What has most surprised some experts in the field is the recent emergence of a true market in Africa for home-scale renewable energy and for appliances that consume less energy.

As the cost of reliable equipment decreases, families have proved ever more willing to buy it by selling a goat or borrowing money from a relative overseas, for example.

www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/science/earth/25fossil.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewa nted=all

Primer: Sizing A Small Solar Electric System
www.energysavers.gov/your_home/electricity/index.cfm/mytopic=10840

This Little Light of Mine
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_jBjty_-sY

Solar Light for Africa (An NPO): Mission Statement
www.solarlightforafrica.org/Solar_Light_for_Africa_Who_We_Are_Mission_Statement. html

Barefoot College: Rural Solar Women Engineers of Africa

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win.
--Mahatma Ghandi

VIDEO:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A450E1QZTY&feature=related

Solar Sisters: Barefoot Women Solar Engineers of Africa

For anyone wishing to draw experience from the Video, it may be worthwhile highlighting some of its key points therein and beyond:

An Indian energy venture benefiting African communities, The Barefoot Women Solar Engineers of Africa aims to improve the lives of people living away from an electricity supply in rural parts of Africa by giving them clean, renewable and low-cost sources of energy.
The ‘barefoot approach’ demonstrates that illiterate women from remote African villages are capable of becoming solar engineers who can fabricate, install, maintain and repair residential solar lighting systems in their villages with six months of training at the Barefoot College in rural Rajasthan, India, where they are tutored by Indian women who also have low levels of literacy.

Illiterate, poor African women aged 35-55, many of them grandmothers, leave their families to spend 6 months training in India to be solar engineers. They work with their hands, identifying parts by color and relying on oral instruction and sketchbooks. There’s not a lot of electrical theory.

But upon returning to their villages, these women have the skills to solar electrify tens, even hundreds, of houses. Across Africa, 60 engineers have electrified 40 villages at a cost of only 1.5 million USD.

The Barefoot College model is one of radical self-reliance for the poorest of the poor.
Management, control, and ownership of the technology lie with the community. The village decides how much to spend on electrification, and chooses the woman who will receive the training. And it is the community itself that certifies the woman as a solar engineer, acknowledging her training and supporting her ongoing work.

The Barefoot College video points out “universal lessons” from the African project.
• Any illiterate woman from any part of Africa, even if she has never left home, can be trained in 6 months in India to be a confident and competent solar engineer. (There are Barefoot Colleges throughout India. It would be interesting to see how the model and code of conduct translate to Africa.)

• Prepare the community first by having them make major decisions on behalf of the whole village, and only then bring in technology.

• Keep urban based “paper-qualified” solar engineers out of the process. A top-down approach doesn’t work. External experts don’t have the vision, faith, or courage to train women as engineers. They also lack the communication tools to speak to villagers as equals.

• No paper certificates are issued; experience shows that in programs where men are paper-certified, they immediately leave their villages for the cities. (I believe that by training older women, the Barefoot College designers are deliberately choosing a population that will be less likely to leave for the city, paper certificate or no.)

• A partnership model, where initial training and materials are donated but expertise and ongoing expenses reside in the village, can work to reach the very poorest.

What are the benefits for the community and environment?
The project reduces the depletion of forests and use of kerosene and diesel, replacing fossil fuel sources with clean, sustainable, low-cost renewable energy.
It provides light from a renewable source to households in remote off-grid areas at minimum expense, facilitating income-generating work and enabling children to read and study at night. Community solar energy committees have been established in each village that ensure community ownership of decision making, select women as solar engineer trainees and establish fees to be paid by community members on a monthly basis from savings made by avoiding purchase of fossil fuels. Fees cover a monthly stipend paid to the women solar engineers for carrying out repair and maintenance duties.

Solar Aid
"Two of the biggest threats facing humanity today are climate change and global poverty. SolarAid helps to combat both by bringing clean, renewable power to the poorest people in the world.

Power to the people

SolarAid works in rural areas across East and Southern Africa; installing solar on schools, community centres and clinics. This is known as macrosolar.

Barely 2% of rural Africa has access to the grid yet many regions of Africa have the highest levels of sunshine in the world. SolarAid works with these remote and disadvantaged communities, helping them tap into an abundant source of free, clean and renewable energy - the sun!"

http://solar-aid.org/

VIDEOS
http://solar-aid.org/about/solar-videos.html