SLS-8d3a - The Individual Household-based Model

Our solar energy projects started in Rwanda in 2015, in Gasabo District in Kigali Province, Rwanda. Even though the community in Gikomero is only 20 kilometers away from the capital city, Kigali, the steeply hilly terrain, relatively infertile soil, lack of irrigation and low level of agricultural technology kept agricultural productivity low. Poor roads and lack of funds for transportation isolates the community from the outside world. As a result, practically all of the population in this area are too poor even to afford improvised electrical setups (such as car batteries) commonly used in other developing communities to compensate for poor national infrastructure. The households rely on candles or kerosene to provide light, and many cannot afford to purchase even these basic materials. The lack of electricity, in turn, makes television and even radio a luxury, further isolating the rural communities from the cities. 

The rural communities are trapped in a vicious cycle from which it is very difficult to escape. Many young people, upon finishing secondary school, cannot find a job in the city and find themselves stuck in the village farming as their parents did, but the small size of the individual plots, the low level of technology available and the energy poverty  make it hard for the farmers themselves to advance beyond subsistence farming. Their isolation is such that they have no way to find out whether and when jobs are available, making them frustrated without a way out.  In their village up on the hills, there is no newspaper, no television, and few radios. They can hardly afford the batteries to run a small transistor radio even if they have one.  The public buses reach only as far as the small clump of houses at the foot of the hills, 10 kilometres away.  Kigali is practically unreachable, physically as well as developmentally, for most of them.  

We started in 2015 with an individual household-based model of a self-contained electrical power system.  Each household was given a 40W solar panel.  A battery was connected to the panel to store the electricity generated during the day, for use overnight. We wiring up each household with basic electrical infrastructure, with low-consumption LED lights (one 12W LED and two 5W LED), a 2A USB charger for cell phones and a rechargeable radio, all powered from the battery.  The solar panel is moveable, so that it can be brought out to operate under the sun during the day, and brought back in during the evening for safe-keeping.   We successfully installed 44 such systems in a two-week period in the summer of 2015.   We were exhausted, but we were exhilarated when the systems worked and we were able to see how exited the families were.  

44 families have electricity now. But what about the hundreds of families in the same village who are still living in the dark?  And the hundreds of villages beyond?