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38 / TREND / Renewable energy<br />
TREND / 39<br />
Solar<br />
System<br />
In isolated, off-grid communities,<br />
SOLAR-POWERED innovations are<br />
improving livelihoods, boosting economic<br />
opportunities and even saving lives.<br />
text Andrea Dijkstra<br />
IN MANY health facilities in rural Sub-Saharan Africa,<br />
doctors conduct emergency surgeries with lights from their<br />
mobile phones, women give birth in the dark without necessary<br />
medical equipment and babies are at risk of dying because<br />
there’s no reliable power to supply oxygen concentrators. “In<br />
the hospital, you often didn’t have access to oxygen cylinders.<br />
So the power goes out and you’re out of luck. We had children<br />
that died in front of our eyes,” said Canadian paediatrician<br />
Michael Hawkes in an interview with Science Daily.<br />
BREATHE IN<br />
Experience working in a Ugandan hospital motivated Dr<br />
Hawkes and his colleagues to develop a solar-powered oxygen<br />
concentrator that provides a constant source of oxygen. Solar<br />
panels on the hospital’s roof supply the oxygen concentrator<br />
with power during the day, which pulls oxygen from the air.<br />
Then, after the sun goes down, batteries charged by the solar<br />
panels keep the concentrator running through the night. The<br />
system was piloted in Jinja and the more remote town of<br />
Kambuga in Uganda, and saved 22 of 28 children in the test<br />
phase. The researchers are now working to expand the system<br />
to 80 hospitals across Uganda. “If we could expand it, could<br />
you imagine how many children would have access to lifesaving<br />
oxygen therapy?” added Dr Hawkes.<br />
According to research from the World Health Organization<br />
(WHO), around 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa still<br />
live without access to electricity, and about one in four health<br />
facilities have no access to electricity, while most others have<br />
an unreliable supply.<br />
However, this situation is starting to change thanks to a<br />
growing number of innovative solar solutions. In Zimbabwe,<br />
for example, solar electricity now provides uninterrupted power<br />
to over 400 healthcare facilities, meaning that lifesaving ><br />
Made in Kenya<br />
Naivasha hosts the first and<br />
only solar panel factory in East<br />
& Central Africa. Solinc East<br />
Africa manufactures solar<br />
panels from 5W to 250W and<br />
assembles complete solar home<br />
kits that include batteries, phone<br />
chargers and LED lights. Its<br />
biggest customer is Nairobi-based<br />
solar company M-KOPA, which<br />
purchased 100,000 panels from<br />
Solinc. The factory in Naivasha<br />
employs 130 Kenyans.<br />
Jeroen van Loon
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