Recently I was informed that Nyumbani Village will be the
recipient of a solar garden that will provide 250 solar panels for
electrification of the village. Exciting isn’t it? Imagine 250 solar panels in
one of the most rural locations in Kenya, lighting up homes of families,
allowing children to play games and study late into the night; a picture donors
will just eat up. There are even plans for us to connect to the grid and sell
the excess energy to the Kenyan government.
I would have been really excited about a project like this
if I hadn’t lived in the village for 9 months. The truth is there are many
easier, cheaper and environmentally friendlier options for the village. I
thought I would list a few in the hopes that someone out there who reads my
blog will, whenever there’s a decision to be made about energy sources, try to
look at the whole picture as opposed to jumping at the “trendy” opportunity
that is waved in front of them with such temptations as subsidies, fancy “21st
century” technology and the oh so generous support of wealthy, ignorant donors.
My favorite energy source for Nyumbani is biofuel aka plant
or vegetable oil. The residents of Nyumbani are well known farmers and we have
sunflowers, castor seeds, moringa, jatropha among other oil crops that all grow
well in this area. The farmers are quite experienced in growing these crops and
a mill to extract the oil is simple and cheap to install; in fact we have a
small hand powered one already. This mill can supply oil to the diesel
generators converted to run on vegetable oil (a super simple and cheap
process), which we already have installed in the village. This is technology
the locals here know and understand. The generators, when they do eventually
break down, can be sold and used for spare parts. An added benefit is that a
generator is extremely hard to steal because it’s so damn heavy. And let’s not
forget the average efficiency of a diesel engine is around 40% (solar ain’t
coming close to that any time soon friends). We’re also sitting on 1000 acres
of land, mostly unused, so we have the area to grow the fuel we need, reducing
our carbon footprint as we increase our energy supply. This venture can also
provide more jobs to extremely poor surrounding community members. These
generators can be spread out in the community to provide electricity for the
100 homes in the village. A more centralized system could be set up for the
schools. I like this idea because there’s no huge start up cost; we have most
of what we need already. I also like that we would use technologies that are
easy accessible in this area and we can find people with lots of experience to
work on this system. Systems like these have been done in agriculture based
developing countries such as Thailand; places I think Kenya should look at more
than say, Germany.
My second choice would be connecting directly to the grid,
the closest point of contact being roughly 8 km away from the village. The
power for this region where Nyumbani is located comes from Masinga Dam, a huge
hydropower plant that is underutilized in the area. Given this system is
already in place, the government wants more people to connect to it and it’s a
relatively environmentally friendly source of energy, it is a viable option for
Nyumbani, especially since they’re planning on connecting to the grid to sell
energy anyway. The risk would be centralizing the power source with the common
issue of power cuts that plague many regions. I don’t think this will be a huge
risk for Nyumbani though since every night, without a doubt, the lights of the
nearest university, Kenyatta University, powered by the grid, light up on the
horizon like a constellation. I can only recall the lights going out once for around
1 minute.
Why I don’t like the solar garden idea
Where to begin? Well, we’re bringing in a bunch of solar
panels that are super expensive and require a ton of energy to make. If you
were to look at the manufacture process of building a solar panel, you’re
probably going to think twice about calling this technology environmentally
friendly. Then you have the wonderful energy efficiency of umm…5%? If there’s a
film of dust on the panel (remember we’re in a semi-arid region) the efficiency
goes down to say 2%. I guess we can employ locals to clean the panels and guard
them 24 hours…trust me, they’ll need tight security for these panels since
solar panels are like gold here and they’re super easy to steal; we’ve already
had solar panels stolen from us. I hope this solar panel garden comes with
insurance. Probably my biggest issue with this project is with the batteries.
We’re going to have a large bank of batteries that will be charged by solar
power and these batteries, given my experience in the village so far, will need
to be replaced roughly every two years. Can you imagine how many batteries that
will be and the cost of this completely un-renewable component? And by the way,
I haven’t seen one place yet that recycles batteries in Kenya, the batteries
are thrown in rivers, left on the side of the road, used as a door stop, the
list goes on. So getting solar panels means polluting Nyumbani with a load of
lead acid batteries no one knows what to do with every two years. Did I mention
we will have 1000 orphan children running around here by the end of this year?
So this is my take on whole energy issue in
the village. It’s unfortunate that this idea for solar power got sold so easily
to the management of Nyumbani Village but I think it’s representative of a lot
of what goes on in poor, developing countries. Wealthy countries try to “help”
poorer ones with trendy technology (probably providing a sweet tax break for
themselves or some nice carbon credits) while uninformed receivers of this
technology jump at any opportunity for help and development without looking at
the whole picture. In the end I really hope this project works even though I
don’t like it; the Nyumbani community has much to benefit from increased access
to energy. I just hope they realize how much work it’s going to be in the long
run and they figure out how to address the challenges they will face with this
venture. Then again, they do have a lot of donor financial support to swallow up all the mistakes they make.
So true. It's the whole "sexiness" versus "appropriateness" issue. I'm curious as to how they are planning on moving 250 solar panels to Nyumbani when you can only access it via foot or boda boda...
ReplyDeleteWho is the donor? Have the panels been procured yet? Plans might not be set in stone and this is a pretty significant investment they're going to be making. Theoretically (hopefully!) they'll want to see measurable results. If you lay out a well-made argument, they may just well pay attention.
Great Post About Trendy Rural Electrification.Thanks for the post, I will look forward to see more posts from your blog and Adpower Generators.
ReplyDelete