African Huts Far From the Grid Glow With Renewable Power

[SoCalDem]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/science/earth/25fossil.html?_r=1



Thanks to this solar panel, Sara Ruto no longer takes a three-hour taxi ride to a town with electricity to recharge her cellphone. More Photos »
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: December 24, 2010

KIPTUSURI, Kenya — For Sara Ruto, the desperate yearning for electricity began last year with the purchase of her first cellphone, a lifeline for receiving small money transfers, contacting relatives in the city or checking chicken prices at the nearest market.
Beyond Fossil Fuels

Starting Small

The New York Times

Solar power for Ms. Ruto’s hut in Kiptusuri, Kenya, means her toddlers no longer risk burns from a smoky kerosene lamp. Charging the phone was no simple matter in this farming village far from Kenya’s electric grid. Every week, Ms. Ruto walked two miles to hire a motorcycle taxi for the three-hour ride to Mogotio, the nearest town with electricity. There, she dropped off her cellphone at a store that recharges phones for 30 cents. Yet the service was in such demand that she had to leave it behind for three full days before returning.

That wearying routine ended in February when the family sold some animals to buy a small Chinese-made solar power system for about $80. Now balanced precariously atop their tin roof, a lone solar panel provides enough electricity to charge the phone and run four bright overhead lights with switches. “My main motivation was the phone, but this has changed so many other things,” Ms. Ruto said on a recent evening as she relaxed on a bench in the mud-walled shack she shares with her husband and six children.

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. Since Ms. Ruto hooked up the system, her teenagers’ grades have improved because they have light for studying. The toddlers no longer risk burns from the smoky kerosene lamp. And each month, she saves $15 in kerosene and battery costs — and the $20 she used to spend on travel.

In fact, neighbors now pay her 20 cents to charge their phones, although that business may soon evaporate: 63 families in Kiptusuri have recently installed their own solar power systems. “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.


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[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. What a great use this is of solar power!

Highly recommended.

[SoCalDem]

2. Imagine if EVERY home in the US had such a device

Even a small amount, multiplied many times , becomes great:)

but of course, the people who own/operate power generating facilities are very against this sort of thing..

whatever would they do, if people started NOT needing their service:evilgrin:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Oh, I LIKE how you think!

:evilgrin:

[alex cross]

6. That's funny, I got a rebate from SRP here in Arizona for installing

solar panels on my roof. I wonder what their motive was? They also purchase any excess from me.

[SoCalDem]

7. a rebate here, a rebate there..no problem... but

if MOST people had little or no use for their service, they would have to find other ways to make money:)

[alex cross]

9. I get ya, kind of like Blockbuster video or

Acme buggy whips.

[eShirl]

11. might their motive have been complying with law?

I'm not sure if it's state or federal, but our power company is required to buy any excess power generated by their customers.

[PSPS]

3. "Chinese-made solar power system for about $80"

That wearying routine ended in February when the family sold some animals to buy a small Chinese-made solar power system for about $80.

Too bad we squandered our chance to be a part of the future by investing and leading in this technology. Oh well. At least the rich won't have to pay any taxes.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

5. +1 (n/t)

[Hissyspit]

8. +2 (n/t)

[cowcommander]

10. It's not as black-and-white as you think

China is able to produce cheaper solar panels at the cost of low wages for their workers and a lack of environmental regulation in their manufacturing. We are able to afford cheaper solar panel now at the expense of China's welfare.

[diane in sf]

12. This is the future--especially for the 1 Billion people on the bottom of the world's economy