On: Workshop: Energy II

In the Energy lobbing workshop Jukka Paatero divided us into groups and gave every group a task that had to do with introducing electricity in different places. The scales of the places were quite different, our group had the case of electrification of a school, while other groups had whole towns or countries to think about. The hardest quest was to present alternatives for a large hydro power project in Congo.

Our task was to, as energy consultants and planners, try to solve the problem of electrification of a school in a notorious urban slum in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. There was funding for building the school, but the funders demanded that the school would be electrified. The local power company refuces to build electric lines to the school, in the middle of the slum, as it fears excessive misuse of the line.

Our suggestion was to equip the school with solar panels, for which there would be a battery keeping the energy until use in the evening, if there would be access energy it would boil up water for the morning porridge. As a back up for rainy periods there would be a generator that could be run on bio fuel generated at the toilets (there would be both toilets for the school kids and others for residents of the area) and from collected biomass from the neighbourhood. Some of the bio fuel could be sold to the community as well as the fertilizers that arise as bi-product. Other benefits for the community from an electrified school would be that they could have evening classes there. Still we thought the school would need a 24/7 guard to keep an eye so that no-one would steal the solar panels. But maybe this person could concentrate more on care taking and maintenance if everyone understood how good it is for the community to have electricity at the school.

First we precented for another group, that got some time to make suggestions of how to make our system even better, and then we presented to the whole group. Our presentation got the comment that it was "overkill" and we were asked if we ever thought that on rainy days there just would not be any lights. The bio fuel plant was seen as a good idea, it would probably be popular if the toilet was good and if people would get benefits from bringing their bio waste there.

I liked this way of doing the workshop, as everyone in the same group worked tor the same goal, with kind of the same background. Presenting to the other group there was also more questions than normal at the end presentation.

The background reeding material for this workshop:
Reliable Electric Power for Developing Countries, Alfredo Vaccaro – General Editor, Humanitarian technology Challenge
Off-grid electricity for developing countries, A Doig, IEE Review, 1999