African Lights: Microgrids Are Bringing Power to Rural Kenya

Plugging into electricity for the first time is a big deal. Ask Peter Okoth. Until late last year, he struggled to make a go of his bar on the main street in Entasopia, a small, dusty town in Kenya’s Rift Valley, five hours from the capital Nairobi and 30 miles from the nearest grid power line. Then, he hooked up to a new solar-powered microgrid that serves local homes and businesses. 

Now Okoth has eleven light bulbs, he says proudly — and enough power to run a TV and a sound system for his customers. Seventy people show up some evenings to watch, listen and buy his food and drink. His profits will  

Soon buy a refrigerator to  keep the beer cold in the searing desert heat, and a big screen to show satellite sports channels. “We will be staying open till midnight,” he says. And he has just bought construction materials for ten guest rooms. “When you next come, you must stay here.” Most settlements in rural Kenya are dark at night. Only a third of the East African country’s residents have access to the national power grid. Harvesting the sun makes obvious sense in places like Entasopia. Hundred-dollar photovoltaic (PV) panels for installation on home roofs have been on sale for years. But the meager five watts that most such systems provide is only enough to power a couple of LED lamps each evening and a mobile phone charging point, and the batteries constantly need replacing. The country is full of discarded PV cells, defunct batteries, and disappointed customers. 

But now, larger central village PV units linked by underground cable to dozens of houses and business are starting to transform lives. For a ten-dollar installation fee, the people of Entasopia can connect to a village microgrid and buy a share of a thousand times as much power. Village homes are filling with household appliances like refrigerators and washing machines, and the businesses on the main street are powering everything from welding equipment and fuel pumps to hair driers. 

Microgrids are small electricity generation and distribution systems that operate independently of larger grids. Typically they rely on local sources of renewable energy, such as river flows, wind, biomass, or, most widely, the power of the sun. There are no official statistics on how many there are, or what their total power output is. But a recent study by U.S.-based Navigant Research, which studies new energy technologies, suggested that their combined generating capacity might now exceed 750 megawatts worldwide. They are, says Daniel Kammen, of the University of California,Berkeley, “a true hot-bed of innovation popping up all over the world.”

Source by: https://e360.yale.edu/feature/african_lights_microgrids_are_bringing_power_to_rural_kenya/2924/