Create A Solar Powered Energy Revolution Across West Africa

Abena Asare said 3 years ago

This is a great idea and a strong business plan.

Your clever approach to financial sustainability-- seeking multiple funding sources including linking for-profit and non-profit work within the same organization--is quite creative; and I appreciate your stated interest in making EFO redundant by increasing the technical capacity of the identified local partner organizations.

In the four key areas of work, how do you conceive of the timing? Would these initiatives occur concurrently or be rolled out in phases? Similarly, working with local organizations is an important part of this proposal. Do the three local organizations already have the capacity to provide office space and vehicles and such?

EFO said 3 years ago

Hi Abena,

Thanks for the feedback and support.

In answer to your questions:
1) Our Partner Organisations all are strong actors in the environmental movement in West Africa and have existing projects with solar. EFO's director, Simon Willans, has worked with all three partners in the past, so we are already aware that they have all the necessary logistics and personal to do this type of work. This was the basis for approaching them to be partners (ie they were screened fully)

2) The Programme concepts have all been developed and tested. The Actual implementation will be driven by the local partner and their programme objectives and then subsequent funding strategies will be driven by this. The Skill Trainings programme is already happening in Sierra Leone and be an ongoing programme.

All the best,

Paul

annamcampbell said 3 years ago

Great Idea! One concern that I think should be addressed early on is that of security. Where I lived in Burkina, Solar Panels were one of the easiest to steal and most valuable items in many small villages. Burkina has a low crime rate, but solar panels were often stolen and many villages sported lamp-posts from which the solar panels had been removed. The story I heard was that they were smuggled into neighboring countries where there was more of a market in the private sector.

It is a matter of public safety as well as of economics. At my school our guard, who was unarmed, was shot at by thieves who stole half of our solar panels one night and took them by motorcycle. It upset us all that a well meaning program that made it possible for our students, who had no electricity at home, to study by electric lights after dark, could have been indirectly responsible.

Ayakope1 said 3 years ago

I do think this is a good project and not sure how I would improve it but also have a few concerns. We also experienced the theft mentioned by Anna on solar pumps. I am still sitting on about $5000.00 worth of solar panels in Togo so I can speak from some experience. My major concern is your opening line that grid networks are set to become the exception. It raises flags for me when we do things in Africa unlike they are done elsewhere. Africa's role models should be China and India not the USA. Everyone in this group should make themselves aware of what Dambisa Moyo says in her book "Dead Aid" or at least listen to some of her interviews easily googled on the web. I do not agree with all she says but I do believe that the best aid for Africa should be given if at all to infrastructure, energy & transport, education & health, and to creating a business friendly and less costly environment for business. Kiva is wonderful at giving small aid in the form of loans. A true business model. Big aid organizations in my mind should join together to create large energy systems, water supplies, transport, and infrastructure projects. I certainly believe solar has a place but feel it is very limited. They are expensive items to place in very poor areas. I would ask who is paying for these items. Is it purely aid? What is the shelf life of the panels before they need to be replaced? Who will pay to replace them? Who owns them? Once again I do not want to be too negative and think the project is good and really like that there has been a fairly extensive past history. Are all those systems still operational?

EFO said 3 years ago

Hi Anna

Thank you for your comment. We are really sorry to hear about your security guard getting shot. We do take a number of precautions to minimize the chance of thefts. Though in reality if thieves show up to a village on motorbikes with guns, there is little that can be done at that moment, and we’d recommend that no one intervene. If such a hopefully rare situation were to occur, we would work with local authorities after the incident, to try to apprehend the thieves. In our experience (in Liberia and Sierra Leone) a lot of these stolen modules come from more local and often opportunistic thieves, to help to stop this occurring we take a number of precautions:

- All other solar items (other than the modules) are always securely locked away (batteries, controllers, invertors etc..)
- We have the modules very securely bolted to the roof (we have seen some installation where modules are only held down by a couple of easily removed bolts) making their removal very complicated. lockable mounting structures can also be used.
- Through the provision of the solar, we are able to supply night-time security lights: helping to expose any would-be thieves.
- We involve the community members in the installation process, thus offering them more ownership of the system and greater stake in keeping it secure.
- We work with local authorities (governments, chiefs, village heads), to help ensure the maintenance and protection of the systems.
- The community generally have security guard employed for guarding the buildings.
- If it is believed necessary we can design modules that can be brought inside and locked up at night.

Of course if you or anyone else has any more suggests, we would be happy to hear them.

EFO said 3 years ago

Hi Ron,

Thanks for the comment and information. I will try and go through your concerns one by one, although I do confess I do not have all the answers.

“My major concern is your opening line that grid networks are set to become the exception. It raises flags for me when we do things in Africa unlike they are done elsewhere. Africa's role models should be China and India not the USA.”

The opening line stems from recognizing the increasing problems that occurring with grid networks in Africa. For example, Kampala (Uganda) and Dakar (Senegal) are considered two of the most “developed” cities in Africa and once boasted constant electrical supplies. Now both cities suffer from regular long-term power cuts. It is a similar story across the rest of Africa. The reality being that Africa is the fastest urbanizing continent and governments have not been able to keep up with basic infrastructural needs. Africa Governments along with major Aid Donors continue to try to address the above, yet the focus is almost entirely on the problem of urban electrical supply. If they are struggling with urban electrical supply, when can we expect grid-electrical infrastructure to properly reach rural populations: 30, 100, 500 years? In reality there is little impetus to expand grid-networks to rural populations, we see stand-alone solar systems in rural areas as one possible (albeit not perfect) remedy to this.

I agree with you that Africa should look to China and India for developmental lessons. Interesting is that both these countries are major manufacturers of solar modules and both have major solar power programs. China has been described as a “solar front-runner” and India has recently unveiled a massive national solar plan. The Indian plan is worth US$19 billion, and under it solar-powered equipment and applications would be mandatory in all government buildings including hospitals and hotels (see References Below). Both these countries have rural electrification problems, and are looking towards solar as a possible solution.

Emma Hughes (2009) “India’s National Solar Plan Under Debate” PvTech, 28 July http://www.pv-tech.org/news/_a/indias_national_solar_plan_under_debate/

Reuters (2009) India to unveil 20GW solar target under climate plan, July 28 http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSDEL104230

EFO said 3 years ago

RON: “the best aid for Africa should be given if at all to infrastructure, energy & transport, education & health, and to creating a business friendly and less costly environment for business.”

We agree completely. We subtly called ourselves Energy For ‘Opportunity’, not Energy For ‘Development’ as we wanted to move away from the paternalistic connotations associated with development. We therefore look to provide infrastructure in terms of energy supply in areas of health, education and communities, as well as offering necessary skills training, therefore helping to increase the potential space for opportunities to occur.

EFO said 3 years ago

RON: “I certainly believe solar has a place but feel it is very limited. They are expensive items to place in very poor areas. I would ask who is paying for these items. Is it purely aid?”

You are right, solar is expensive, but it is getting increasing cheaper for two reasons:
1) Module production and efficiency is increasing and the price has drop reasonably over the past 15 years. This trend is likely to continue.
2) Electrical items are getting increasingly equipment (A 2watt LED can produce as much light as a 60 watt incandescent). For under US$100 a basic module/LED lighting system can now be made for houses now.
We mention EFO’s funding strategy in the above idea, which includes a mixture of aid, and a mixture of for-profit work in urban areas and where appropriate end-user payments. The more we can move away from aid the better. In most countries telecommunication and electrical infrastructure for rural areas is subsidized by profits from urban infrastructure, so there is nothing overly new about our idea, except for the context in which it is being applied. Also as we grow we would also like to explore other small-scale electrification options that have been used successfully elsewhere in the world (i.e. bio-diesel, micro-hydro, wind power).

It is important to also note that installing grid-electrical supplies to rural areas are also very expensive, require considerable maintenance costs and have considerable ongoing costs in terms of supply. In most cases solar power is a much more cost-effective approach. Furthermore grid-electrical systems are also susceptible to theft;the thieving of wire from the grid network is quite common practice in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

RON: “What is the shelf life of the panels before they need to be replaced? Who will pay to replace them? Who owns them?”

The shelf life for modules is generally 25 years. The weakest part of the system is actually the batteries, which have a shelf life of about 10-15 years (less if they are used incorrectly). It is weakness that we are aware of and trying to find different ways address. Another thing to address is the safe disposable of these batteries after their shelf-life.

In terms of ownership the systems will be owned by the sites. With schools and health clinic this generally means they will fall under the jurisdiction of education and health ministries respectively. We try to work close with these government bodies during our installations. The idea being that they can develop budget lines for equipment replacement down the track. Often, in health clinics, we are replacing generators, which already represent a considerable financial burden in terms of fuel and maintenance. The cost of replacing the solar equipment over time being a much minor financial burden and the maintenance cost of solar in between these times is negligible. In communities, the solar installations are designed to raise funds, (via a fee for recharging electrical items), a budget line can be diverted for maintenance and the necessary replacing or even upgrades for the system.

None of the above are perfect and it is an area that we need to monitor and experiment with. Invariably we can’t plan everything perfectly before we start and no doubt we will have a number of trial and error situations. That is why we plan on working long-term in each target country with well established local partners, so we can monitor our systems, collecting data (both technical system data and social impact data), hopefully improving our work and systems over time.

Ayakope1 said 3 years ago

Thanks for the very detailed and thoughtful answers, Paul. I do support you 100%. But, I also support Ms. Moyo and her thoughts. I agree with her in many ways on aid to Africa and I see the same problem here in the USA. Aid often as not creates dependence and opens the door for many kinds of corruption. We need better models and I believe you are on the way to creating some. I hope that is the focus of all discussions on this site.

poestencreasey said 3 years ago

EFO: Surely the solar reflector technology is the best solution? Glass, steal, and a steam turbine. It's Victorian technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Functional_sketch_Fresnel_power_genera...

I heard a German scientist talking about this on bbc radio 4, he calculated that by using the solar reflector technology, north Africa could potentially power Europe. Just gotta make sure multi nationals don't start buying up the deserts! The phrase "yellow gold" will be coined, if not already. This will happen, it's just a matter of who benefits. The lessons of history show it will be hard to keep this resource in the hands of the people of Africa.

SimonRichards said 2 years ago

What are the estimated lifecycle costs, e.g. $ per kWh? Even if those might be thought not to be relevant due to the absence of realistically available alternatives at present, they give some idea of where this might ultimately end up in the longer term.

ZambiaPetaukeSchoolDistrict said 2 years ago

This sounds like a nice project, but I wonder if even the 20,000 dollar prize would be enough to get it off the ground. As a former volunteer I saw the difference that solar can make in a school (lights for the class rooms, and cell phone charging were amoung the biggest) but I also saw the huge costs involved as I worked with an NGO to plan a new solar system at a school. For 3 classroom blocks (2 classrooms and 1 small office each) and 5 teachers houses the costs were over 10000. While costs are surely less to a non landlocked country, deep cycle batteriers are very expensive and I found after 6 or 7 years top of the line batteries had greatly reduced capacity. This expensive system was able to power a tv or a radio however when UNICEF donated a computer to the school they were unable to power both the pc and the printer at the same time resulting in a black box were information could be entered but not taken out. A much reduced system like the one you mentioned earlier "2) Electrical items are getting increasingly equipment (A 2watt LED can produce as much light as a 60 watt incandescent). For under US$100 a basic module/LED lighting system can now be made for houses now. " does make a difference but the types of systems you mention in your propsal systems including computer labs and health clinic fridges are very expensive. I'd love to see what you expect your expenses on such a project to be. What would the 3,000 get you? what would the 20,000 get you? would this be enough to complete a project? if so what project?

ZambiaPetaukeSchoolDistrict said 2 years ago

This sounds like a nice project, but I wonder if even the 20,000 dollar prize would be enough to get it off the ground. As a former volunteer I saw the difference that solar can make in a school (lights for the class rooms, and cell phone charging were amoung the biggest) but I also saw the huge costs involved as I worked with an NGO to plan a new solar system at a school. For 3 classroom blocks (2 classrooms and 1 small office each) and 5 teachers houses the costs were over 10000. While costs are surely less to a non landlocked country, deep cycle batteriers are very expensive and I found after 6 or 7 years top of the line batteries had greatly reduced capacity. This expensive system was able to power a tv or a radio however when UNICEF donated a computer to the school they were unable to power both the pc and the printer at the same time resulting in a black box were information could be entered but not taken out. A much reduced system like the one you mentioned earlier "2) Electrical items are getting increasingly equipment (A 2watt LED can produce as much light as a 60 watt incandescent). For under US$100 a basic module/LED lighting system can now be made for houses now. " does make a difference but the types of systems you mention in your propsal systems including computer labs and health clinic fridges are very expensive. I'd love to see what you expect your expenses on such a project to be. What would the 3,000 get you? what would the 20,000 get you? would this be enough to complete a project? if so what project?

patisiukwu said 2 years ago

Wonderful concept. Though I've voted for my friends on Zittnet for their concept, I'm saying you guys are great too. I wish we all could win.

EFO said 2 years ago

Hi Zambia Petuake School District

The costs that you have described are high but not unusual, we can do the same for about 70% of what you stated. Prices for solar are getting increasing cheaper, in terms of equipment and energy efficiency. We take a holistic approach to solar installation, i.e. it’s not just about putting modules on the roof, but rather emphasize the creation of an energy efficient system with solar modules. Therefore instead of desktop PCs for installation (which can use up to 300W) we instead use highly energy efficient computers that use around 20W. By concentrating on energy efficiency you can dramatically reduce the cost of a solar system.

With our work, the big thing we are trying to break from is the project to project mentality, but rather to develop long-term ongoing programs in our target countries. The funds from ARC (if received) would part or a diverse funding strategy that will include financing from the private sector, corporate entities, private donors and traditional funding (our partner in Sierra Leone for example has been awarded funding for solar skills training at a technical institute). Any money from ARC will contribute to the over program, and its use will be driven by our local partners. Though to give you an idea of costs, a solar system to power computers at a secondary school would cost around US$5000 (even less if we use a DC power only system).

I hope this answers your queries. If need be, we would be happy to help your school in any way we can with its system design and troubleshooting.

All the best,
Paul

cjshaw said 2 years ago

Go Gang
Great Idea!

ecobenin said 2 years ago

This project very interesting and very appropriate in localities such as the ones where Eco-Benin is promoting community-based ecotourism in Benin; see details at http://www.ecobenin.org/IMG/pdf/Brochure_EcoBenin_English_version.pdf
I wish you the best succes
Gautier AMOUSSOU
www.ecobenin.org

sociolingo said 2 years ago

I wish you success with your project. The concept paper seems well thought out.

Do you have contact with the Barefoot College in India. They have trained women in Timbuktu, Mali and in Sierra Leone as solar engineers using a quite revolutionary teaching model.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhpyS5U1KY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_RT8pngx1A
http://www.barefootcollege.org/

Will there be any connection between what you are planning and the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation plans for a mega solar power grid from the Sahara to Europe?
http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Solar-Power-for-Europe-from-Sahara.htm

Sociolingo Africa
http://www.sociolingo.com

EFO said 2 years ago

Thanks for your feedback sociolingo. We have been in direct contact with Barefoot College and are currently trying out ways in which we can work together. They have definitely done some excellent.

As of yet we have no connection with the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation plans for a mega solar power grid from the Sahara to Europe. However I have been reading about it with great interest. Perhaps in future, if the opportunity arises, we can contribute ideas to the initiative.

All the best,

Paul

atsiuqmlap said 2 years ago

Solar power from scratch is so ambitious as to be almost unattainable. Have you considered and intermediary step? If the land needed for solar were to be condemned for palm production, bio diesel could be produced and exported, the profits for which could be reinvested in solar to replace palm incrementally. This boot strapping method would leverage current expertise in palm production while integrating experience in energy production. This plan would take 20 years for solar to begin production, but there would be a clear and workable path to follow.

peacecorpschadsey said 2 years ago

I think this is a nice idea, but I am concerned with the sustainability aspect. In northern Benin, a German NGO came through and installed numerous solar power systems for schools, health centers, and town lighting. After 16 months around 80% of the solar systems were inoperable. These are the hard facts of installing high technology in the third world environment (northern Benin sees temps rise to 130 degrees during hot season, cool season dust blows in from the Sahel and coats everything). Your idea to combat this sounds nice, training students at university to install / service the systems. But, as you also pointed out, the education system here is limited. The university graduates who gain your training will be specialists...thusly it would take much of these communities’ resources to hire out these contractors to fix these systems...we're not even talking about parts / replacments. A lower cost option might prove more beneficial for the long term.