Today, we visited St. Jude's Family Center, a farm that incorporates many sustainable techniques into its practices. One of the most interesting things was their generation of their own bio-gas from the manure of the animals they raised. As far as we could tell, there were about four cows, ten pigs and many more piglets, and about 2,000 chickens all producing quite a bit of waste on any given day.
Various pits housed the manure, with furrows running into them to drain urine as well. The majority of the manure is recycled into compost material and had very visible results, when comparing the bananas of St. Jude's to the bananas of their neighbors. However, a fair amount of cow dung goes into bio-gas production. This manure is held in a pit that was covered in wet clay to contain the gas that is produced as the manure decomposes, so that when the gas rises to the top of the pit it is forced out through a system of pipes which runs to a cooking stove in a different part of their farm. In this manner, the farm saves on costs of gas/electricity to run their stove, and also prevents the usage of more environmentally impactful energy sources (i.e.: wood, charcoal). The only compromise that must be made is to deal with the sharp manure odor in the first few seconds of turning on the gas to the farm's stove.
We encountered a lot more solar power in Masaka today. While the entire group was buying Orange sticks (which provide internet access to computers for 85,000 shillings/$40 for 3 GB in one month), Julian discovered small 2.5 Watt solar kits which were branded as for charging phones and powering lights. The man who we were speaking to loved these panels, claiming that many many Ugandans had them. The pitch that he quickly offered to us was an interesting one. He had a little plastic sheet that would help you calculate how much money buying one would save you over the course of four years, and kept pointing to various downsides to things like kerosene lamps (i.e.: the potential to burn your house down).
These solar kits cost 65,000 Ugandan shillings, but seem a little too good to be true. This roughly translates to $26 USD and the kit used a 1.5 W solar panel to do phone charging and power one lamp with a 750 mAh battery. It should have made it more clear but I assume that the phone charging capabilities can only be used during sun light hours because the smallest phones here have 800 mAh batteries.
However, if these solar kits are capable of the amount of charging that their box advertises (6 phones every two hours or four hours of LED light at the highest maximum lighting), then their setup is incredibly cost-effective. Interestingly they claim that only 3 hours is needed to charge a 700 mAh phone battery even though for their 750 mAh battery (also LiIon like phone batteries) 8 hours are needed. Hmm....strange calculation there...
This Barefoot Power-Orange cooperation is an interesting counterpart to MTN's work on a very similar solar kits made by Fenix. (The two are competing phone companies.) Each product is listed below:
Various pits housed the manure, with furrows running into them to drain urine as well. The majority of the manure is recycled into compost material and had very visible results, when comparing the bananas of St. Jude's to the bananas of their neighbors. However, a fair amount of cow dung goes into bio-gas production. This manure is held in a pit that was covered in wet clay to contain the gas that is produced as the manure decomposes, so that when the gas rises to the top of the pit it is forced out through a system of pipes which runs to a cooking stove in a different part of their farm. In this manner, the farm saves on costs of gas/electricity to run their stove, and also prevents the usage of more environmentally impactful energy sources (i.e.: wood, charcoal). The only compromise that must be made is to deal with the sharp manure odor in the first few seconds of turning on the gas to the farm's stove.
We encountered a lot more solar power in Masaka today. While the entire group was buying Orange sticks (which provide internet access to computers for 85,000 shillings/$40 for 3 GB in one month), Julian discovered small 2.5 Watt solar kits which were branded as for charging phones and powering lights. The man who we were speaking to loved these panels, claiming that many many Ugandans had them. The pitch that he quickly offered to us was an interesting one. He had a little plastic sheet that would help you calculate how much money buying one would save you over the course of four years, and kept pointing to various downsides to things like kerosene lamps (i.e.: the potential to burn your house down).
These solar kits cost 65,000 Ugandan shillings, but seem a little too good to be true. This roughly translates to $26 USD and the kit used a 1.5 W solar panel to do phone charging and power one lamp with a 750 mAh battery. It should have made it more clear but I assume that the phone charging capabilities can only be used during sun light hours because the smallest phones here have 800 mAh batteries.
However, if these solar kits are capable of the amount of charging that their box advertises (6 phones every two hours or four hours of LED light at the highest maximum lighting), then their setup is incredibly cost-effective. Interestingly they claim that only 3 hours is needed to charge a 700 mAh phone battery even though for their 750 mAh battery (also LiIon like phone batteries) 8 hours are needed. Hmm....strange calculation there...
This Barefoot Power-Orange cooperation is an interesting counterpart to MTN's work on a very similar solar kits made by Fenix. (The two are competing phone companies.) Each product is listed below:
The questions that still need to be answered is how reliable are these units and how affordable are they to the average (or poorest) Ugandans. Our nodes, like these are intended to become a business however our nodes are a much more permanent set up and are far more powerful than the Barefoot and MTN ones. MTN is currently trying to pair with a local micro-finance company in Masaka (and I assume they are doing this everywhere in Uganda and Rwanda) called The Masaka Elders to give loans for these devices. Apparently micro-finance loans around here have interests rates floating around 32%. Not too sure that is affordable for this business.
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