Shared Solar

Electricity is slowly, slowly coming to Ruhiira. Due to funding bureaucracy, the plan to connect Ruhiira to the Ugandan grid has been put off. But in the meantime, a shared solar project has gone up. Most of the time, solar power requires a considerable up-front investment for individual solar panels. This project is similar to connecting to the electric company, then paying as you go. A small building in the village has several large solar panels and good batteries to store the energy. About 20 homes or businesses can then be hooked up. To use the system, consumers buy scratch cards that have code numbers on them; they then dial into an SMS system using a cell phone and put the number in. (This is the way cell phone airtime and internet time/data is done here- you pay prior to use using scratch cards and once your credit is gone, the cell phone or internet stops working.) As you can imagine, electricity use is MUCH lower in the village than in the US. There may be one or two high efficiency bulbs and a socket for cell phone- no refrigerator, dishwasher, air conditioner, etc., etc. (and the guy who wanted to hook up 125 watt speakers was told no.) So people may buy $1-$2 of electricity at a time; $1 would buy about 10 days of a single 8 watt light bulb shining 3 hours per night. The photos are of the panels, Innocent, the onsite supervisor, and the first test run of the system. A website that shows more photos of Ruhiira with the lights on is http://sharedsolar.mech.columbia.edu/