Solar Power Trip

Work lately has consisted primarily of reading and writing reports, so writing after work has not been an option. But, my sister sent me a note that basically said that she knew that I wouldn’t send a card or even call, but that if I wrote a new blog post (with pictures), then she would forgive me. So, here it is.
The infrastructure program that MCA-L is working on here includes the 250 rural water supply and sanitation projects as well as 138 health center refurbishments. They’re spread all over the country and their locations are often hard to discern on Google Earth, so we bought 1:50,000 scale maps for the whole country. There are roughly 60 of them. When they were delivered they came in two rolls of 30 maps each and were just plopped on my desk. That was an unusable way to keep the maps, so I decided to make a map holder.

A quick trip to the hardware store yielded some 2x2 and 50 dowel rods. Mel was in town doing some work on the Peace Corps’ Volunteer Resource Center, so she came over and helped me build the thing. She liked woodworking more than the metalworking that was required for the solar panel mount we built for her.

The final product turned out pretty well. It’s full of maps in my office now and I got an “I’m impressed” comment from the CEO.

16 months after we originally turned in the proposal for the Ambassador’s Self-Help Grant, all of the equipment finally arrived at the school. The final system consists of 6, 135 Watt solar panels (total of 810 Watts for the array), 8 100 Amp-hour deep cycle marine batteries, a 2000 Watt pure sine wave inverter and a 30 Amp solar charge controller. I went up last Thursday to help install the system.

I arrived at about 2:30 pm and immediately started unboxing everything. It was awesome. The wiring for the staff room, office and library had been completed in January, so I was able to put up the control box (the regulator and two breakers).

About half an hour after sun down we were able to use the light switch on the wall to turn on the lights in the office. It was a very exciting night.

The next day some local builders came to install an enclosure for the batteries. When the batteries charge they let off some pretty nasty fumes, they are also about $140 each, so the enclosure will provide some additional burglar proofing.


The builders did a great job. They were going to come back the following Monday to set up forms and pour two steel reinforced, high strength concrete lids for the enclosure. In the picture below you can see the holes that we drilled for the fumes to escape. The wires running from the battery pack to the inverter (the big blue box that converts the batteries’ Direct Current to 220 Volt, 50 Hertz Alternating Current) are 00 gauge, which means they’re about as big around as your thumb. It’s some beefy stuff.


The solar panels we got are some high-quality Kyocera panels. They’re 1.5 x .7 m, which makes the total array 1.5 x 4.2 m. It’s big. With the battery pack all wired up and working, I headed out to the library to look at all the books that were just sent through the African Library Project (thanks everybody for your hard work, especially Ma). With the additional 1000 books that arrived recently, there are now roughly 2200 books in the library, which is now powered. It was very satisfying to see the lights shining on all those books.


With the wiring completed, it was time to move our attention towards the panel mount structure. The company who provided all of the equipment also built us a custom mount for the panels. Its 3 meter height did not meet the safety requirements of the principal, so he had an additional 3 meters of big square tubing welded onto the bottom of the main posts. Installation of 6 meter poles is much different than 3 meter poles.
To start with we had to try to point the array appropriately to maximize the amount of time the sun was shining on it. Unfortunately the compass I brought had been messed up and was facing almost directly East. We averaged everybody’s guess of North and then adjusted it based on the sun’s path. I think we nailed it.


The next task was to dig the main holes. The depth of the hole went from 1 meter for the 3 meter poles to 2 meters for the extensions. Luckily the soil was fairly easy to dig in, but the length of the spades the school has is only 1 meter. It required the bys from the school to crawl down into the holes to remove the dirt loosened by throwing the shovels down into the hole. I don’t think we got fully two meters down, but we got close.


Next we had to raise the poles into place. It was a fairly dangerous exercise, but we had a lot of hands on the structure and the support poles (that were originally supposed to be placed in concrete in the ground, but which now hung uselessly 1 meter from the ground) provided some additional leverage to raise and steady the big piece of metal.
To brace the beast while concrete dried, some poles were found and both sides were pulled down so that they were in compression, then fastened together at the top with some boards to create a sort of A-frame structure. It worked well enough, as the panel mount stayed upright until the concrete cured.


The added height of the structure made it very wobbly. Pushing on it modestly sent it into tuning-fork mode and it vibrated steadily for a couple minutes. In order to stiffen the structure up and make sure that it didn’t fall over in the wind, the principal went to town and came back with some 6 meter lengths of beefy angle iron.

Some more holes were drilled (Nate, the new volunteer at Sefako High was getting some of his first metalworking experience) and the support pieces aligned with the rest of the structure. The principal decided the task of mixing and pouring the concrete should be left to the students. So, we are left only with the mounting of the solar panels. It’s going to be a tricky task at the new height of the panel mount structure, but we were able to borrow some scaffolding, which should make the activity possible. I’ll be heading back up in a week or so to finish installation of the panels and some razor wire around the structure to give the panels more security. When it’s all done the system will provide the school with clean, reliable, nearly maintenance-free electricity to power their printer, lights, 2 laptops and hopefully a couple desktop computers in the library. It’s a great improvement to the school and will hopefully allow it to attract teachers who would otherwise shun the school due to its remoteness and lack of amenities.

While I was in Sefako I stayed at Mike’s house. It was a bit strange to be back in Sefako and not have lights or power. It was quiet and dark by 5:30, which left a terrible South African pop station and a book as my only diversions. I was in bed by 7:30 every night.


We finished up the solar stuff pretty late on Sunday afternoon. While I was waiting around for the taxi I took some pictures of boys playing soccer in front of the shop. It’s a much different looking place in mid-winter with the brown hills all around. There are parts of the mountains that flash red at sunset though, as the sun dips behind the hill and some of the grasses show off their more muted hues.


The taxi finally came at 4, which would have put me in town around 6:15 or so. I wasn’t excited about it, but I figured I could probably make it back to Maseru. 35 minutes later the taxi stopped and said that they weren’t going to town, there weren’t enough people on the taxi. So we waited for a taxi to pass by going the other way and they put me on that. So I returned to Sefako a little after 5, only to get back on a taxi the next morning at 6:30. Oh how I miss rural living…