A key aspect of helping the developing world is not only ensuring that they have sufficient power and infrastructure to run key facilities like schools and hospitals. It is also important to ensure that their energy infrastructure is resilient and, hopefully, runs on renewable energy. Contact online >>
A key aspect of helping the developing world is not only ensuring that they have sufficient power and infrastructure to run key facilities like schools and hospitals. It is also important to ensure that their energy infrastructure is resilient and, hopefully, runs on renewable energy.
This is what OnePower has done and continues to do in Lesotho, a very small mountainous country surrounded by South Africa.
OnePower CEO Matt Orosz first spent time in Lesotho from 2000 to 2002 as a member of the Peace Corps. He had a vision of bringing necessary light and electricity to people in rural Lesotho. He kept this in mind while pursuing his education at MIT, getting his Ph.D. in solar thermal and photovoltaic hybrid power generation. In 2015, Orosz began his full-time work with OnePower in Lesotho.
OnePower is bringing power to rural regions of Lesotho in the sustainable form of microgrids. Communities that are far away from major population centers might be far away from the main grid, but with the microgrids, that OnePower is creating they can sustain themselves and be immune from any damage that major power grids might incur.
While there are other minigrids operations in Africa, none can claim the feats that OnePower has accomplished. Lesotho is crisscrossed by mountain ranges and a river — known as the Kingdom in the Sky — and it is especially difficult for electricity to reach some remote communities.
OnePower''s first minigrid has been providing power to 200 customers for over a year. Orosz and OnePower are expanding this to an eight-minigrid project that will provide reliable electricity to over 30,000 people, 13 health clinics, 25 schools, and more than 100 small businesses. Not only that, these systems are powered by OnePower''s solar panels. Construction of these sites is underway, and Orosz is working on power transmission over obstacles like roads and rivers.
New initiatives like this often rely on grants for their startup capital, but Orosz secured funding from several private investors. By ensuring that his investors get a return on their investment, Orosz and OnePower will prove that their business and technology are worthwhile investments.
"The goal is ultimately to prove that you can make this work: that you can generate electricity and sell it to a customer in Africa, and that revenue enables you to pay back the financier that helped you build the infrastructure in the first place," Orosz says. "Once you close that loop, then it can scale. That’s the holy grail of minigrids."
Source Study: MIT News — Expanding energy access in rural Lesotho | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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This project aims to deliver 24x7 reliable electricity to the people of the target villages. The electricity will not only cater to domestic and gendered needs but also to small businesses, schools, and enable establishment of new microenterprises and services such as mills, pumps, etc. The project will provide clean energy at affordable prices, boosting commercial activity in the villages. Given the solar incidence data, solar PV is the most appropriate technology to use. Although small-scale micro-hydro has been identified as a further option in certain communities, this comes at a considerably higher complexity of installation, maintenance and dependence on rain, and hence has been judged not to be suitable for these particular communities.
To ensure that the system is sized optimally, the project will aim to manage demand distribution during the day, and will aim to reduce the night time load, with a combination of smart metering and through the usage of timers. This demand management will also ensure that battery life is optimised, so that replacement cost is kept at minimum possible levels. We will include street lighting in the project in addition to other community services and productive use technologies; with the addition of lighting in community spaces, public safety increases. Public lighting will also increase the social fibre in the community. The combination of a social community based model combined with a high quality solar system makes it a pioneering project in Lesotho.
Ideally, mini-grids setup in very remote locations should be community-managed to increase ownership and participation, where the technical and financial responsibility for the ongoing management of the plant resides with the communities. In each location, the project will aim to gain the trust of the communities and develop a deep understanding of the local realities and communities'' needs. These provide the necessary socio-cultural context in each location, facilitating the initial process of trust building and social engagement.
A local technical operator will also be appointed in each village and trained by project staff. The operator is responsible for performing basic technical tasks such as turning on and off the plant/water supply, maintaining the system clean and operative, and informing the local partners in case any major issues arise. The operator is also generally in charge for the monthly billing and collection of tariffs from each house (in many of Gram Oorja''s villages almost all the committee members and operators are women). Over time, local institutional capacity is built, however the consortium will continue to hold long- term accountability for any major technical issues with the system.
The Low Carbon Energy for Development Network is an initiative of the Durham Energy Institute and the Midlands Energy Consortium.
Website by White Fuse. Photos by Seth Doyle, Riccardo Annandale.
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