Internet is Back!

So after Lydia left (see the initial setup in this post) there seemed to be some mishaps with the internet in Lwemodde. The dish was not providing a strong signal and their modem did not appear to work. They traded the Airtel one for a UTL modem in the hope that that would provide a better situation. I think they were given some crappy useless modem – didn’t seem to work.

They still had the router that they bought from the Airtel shop which will route internet from the USB modem to their three computers. Their netbooks are basically just a smartphone with a keyboard and large screen. They run Android’s Jelly Bean 4.1 operating system which means they are basically only useful for browsing the web. This is why they were so cheap I assume. The battery life is close to 0 and you don’t have to pay for the MAC or MS OS. Just being able to browse the internet is fine though for the majority of their purposes. Their third computer was brought in by Junior. It is a Pentium 4 and it runs Windows XP. We can connect it to the router via ethernet and it works just fine.

While we were setting up everything and testing out the computers, the power, as it always does in Uganda, went out and so we did what we loved to do – run things from our solar utility node. We quickly connected the router’s power port to the 5 V phone chargers that are powered by the12 V battery. The netbooks also run off 5 V provided that you dedicate an entire charger to each of them since they draw 2 A each. The router and the computers worked off solar power and so even in periods of long blackout they should have no trouble accessing the internet.

So, how did we get internet to function? I explained the setup in this way to them. There are 3 connections that need to be made.

1. Modem to 3G cell network. (Actually we can only get 2G out there)

2. Modem must be able to talk to the router.

3. Wifi connection from computers to router.

I worked backwards starting with connection 3 and making my way to 1. I explained the concept of IP addresses and how to access the router once a wifi connection is made. That would be to open a browser and go to address 192.168.0.1. Once we logged into the router I explained what the different settings were, the difference between WAN and LAN and how to check on the status of the modem. That brought us to connection 2. After that was understood we tried to perfect connection 1.

Now just plugging the modem into the router where it sat initially actually did allow for a 2G connection and internet was accessible. It was just unusably slow. In different locations it was slightly faster and slower. We tried putting the modem at the focus of the satellite dish and moving it a bit from side to side We actually got less reception (0 bars) compared to inside (2 bars). My thinking was that it was too fiddly and uncertain to use a perfect parabolic dish at this stage so we focused on moving the modem on the inside of their shop. Bizarrely, the best reception was towards the back of their shop.

That night I went home and used my internet to research methods of improving 3G signal. I quickly came across this video. In the video you will see that pretty decent signal enhancement can be attained by just putting the modem in a saucepan. Yes, this is not parabolic and not focal at all but I think the theory is that you will capture some waves in a wide area and just make them bounce in a fashion which is more likely to hit the modem antenna. I stressed to them that it was important to use a metal pot to allow for this bouncing of EM waves to occur.

The next day we found a pot, as you will see in the pictures below, and tested it. Outside of the pot we couldn’t load the page http://speedof.me which is a simple speed test website. Just a side note, I have never understood why http://speedtest.net thought it was a good idea to fill their page with heavy flash scripts to just do a speed test. If you are doing a speed test it is likely that you don’t have much speed in the first place…..why therefore make the page full of unnecessary data. Seems really stupid.

Junior (left) and Betty (right) testing out the net. You can see the modem in a cooking pot. This was one of our best locations.  As Murphy would have it, it is in the most inconvenient place.

Inside the pot, at the very back of the room, we got 0.03 Mbps speed on average. This was after about 3 tests. Our best location gave us 0.13 Mbps and we were able to stream bits of YouTube video. Junior was very happy to see his favorite music video playing.

I told them to just keep experimenting. Use different sized pots, place the modem in different places in the pot and place the pot in different places at different angles. It will just be a lot of trial and error but I think their internet may just become useable. This is a pretty cool service for them. The closest internet for the surrounding villages is in Kalisizo, and even then it barely works there.

Here you can see all three computers. The router is on top of the monitor.

Two coffee farmers which wandered into the shop got to see the Wikipedia page for coffee for the first time ever.

They also found an article about Ugandan coffee exports going up 7% in the last year.

More internet!

Now that internet is at Lwemodde it will be easy for them to contact Lydia and myself about questions they have or simply research the answers themselves. They still want something to help them learn to type rapidly and so I will work on something which doesn’t use the internet for that. I was thinking of just coding something simple in JavaScript which will run in the browser. That will allow for basic graphics and it should function on all three computers. I can attach the HTML page in an email and they can load it on each computer.

Future Plans and Numbers

I discussed with them their current business plan and tried to understand where they want to take the grid.  The future of the micro grid lies in the hands on the group and how they vote on where to spend money. They are a very democratic and fair group which try to serve all interests. As I said in the previous post, already in the pipeline are the needs of a printer and photocopier. They also want to expand their shop and the number of computers they have. All of these ideas, and probably more, are in the mix with the grid and of course you can only spend money on so many items.

Miki, the chairman of the Lwemodde Youth Group, said that he wants to put 1 solar panel (I assume 100 W) in another fishing village like Malembo. I think the idea was to start with 1 and then slowly make their way to 2 solar panels so it would be a microgrid equal in size to the Malembo Microgrid. This is a fair plan especially since they also only have 1 PWM5 solar charge controllers left. This one was kindly donated by Julian Ilett a few months ago.

Now that Lydia and I have given them the knowledge to install a solar grid and expand it, I think our work in that regards is complete. There group will make the best decision about when to fund expansion because they definitely understand the surrounding market. We are grateful to have worked with such an organized and considerate group. They are becoming more powerful than the local government and may as well just be the local government in many ways.

Besides all the other modes on income and expenses that the group has, we did some rough paper calculations about the payoff period for a 200 W solar grid like the one in Malembo. Below are the rough costs and the amount of money you can make each month. Currently there are 10 clients but they are about to install boost/buck converters to expand coverage. If this occurs they estimate they will have 30 clients. I still believe they can get up to 50 easily but we will work with the conservative number.

Note: all values are in Ugandan shillings (UGX).

•        100 AH lead-acid battery – 400 k
•         2 * 100 W solar panels – 1600 k
•         30 * LED lamps – 300 k
•         30 * switches – 10 k
•         5 spools of wire – 75 k
•         Solar charge controller – 75 k
•         Boost/buck converters – 150 k
•        Other little pieces and safety money – 100 k

We can round this off to 2.7 M UGX per grid. Now with 30 customers paying 9 k per month, you can get 270 k per month. Each month you need to pay the person running the grid. The group told me they would expect only 100 k per month. The other 170 k would go to maintenance and the salary of the technician. We have not even considered phone charging revenue. A very rough estimate says that we would get 50 k per month from that going to the group’s coffers. So if we assume 150 k per month is going to a central surplus, you could pay off the 2.7 M UGX cost of a single microgrid in 18 months exactly. If they got 50 customers they could probably push this down to 1 year.

Now after 18 months they could set up another grid in another electrified village. The pay off period should now be half of 18 months. If they have 5 grids set up they could buy a new grid each month. This sounds like a very lucrative market to be going into. At worst case, I think the microgrid model that the group has implemented is very sustainable and beneficial to the communities it reaches. Hopefully in a few years’ time they have 2 or 3 more villages powered by similar grid schemes. Hopefully this has flow on effects to give more people a reading light at night time, more money for other expenses and a cleaner environment to be in.

Side Effects of the Microgrid for the Youth Group

The project has given the Lwemodde Youth Group a lot more notoriety. This is very beneficial to them so they can build contacts but also to give people the opportunity to join their group if they want to. I think that is good for anyone because the group spreads information about important work related subjects such as crop management and farming techniques. They also discuss critical information about combating HIV and they can direct people to many services to help with a very large number of issues. Locally, they provide much more programming, information and public entertainment than all levels of government in the area.

Recently, a group which provides financial aid to villages came through to inspect different leadership teams. Their goal was to find groups that are highly active and well run in order to have some assurance of the money being used well. The grid also helped them demonstrate a very wide spread presence. The funding committee was very impressed at all of their work and so I think the group will simply continue to grow.

Preparation to amass the Lwemodde Youth Group in front of the funding committee. (Ignore the USAID tarp, this is just clever reusing.)

In session.

Their next ambitions actually are to get a printer and photocopier in their shop. There are multiple schools in the area and local council units which must travel to Kalisizo (30 minute motorbike ride away) to get such services. They believe it would be very profitable to run this service and would definitely save lots of travel for people.

Back To Malembo

Yesterday I went to Malembo and we did 3 major things:

1. Speak to Alex about how operation of the grid has been going.

2. Speak to 3 clients about the service.

3. Explain how the next upgrade of boost/buck converters will help.

Interview with Alex:

Alex is a man who is linked to the Lwemodde youth group and effectively works for them in the small fishing village of Malembo. He runs a number of services. Firstly he runs 3 shops. One for clothes, one for drinks (like water, coke, etc.) and one for utilities. In this town, utilities can be batteries, fishing paddles, superglue, rubber from tire tubes and other random items. Each night Alex uses a petrol generator and inverter to run the town’s cinema. It consists of some camping style pews and a moderately sized cathode ray TV. See photos below. Apparently each night it packs out and he charges only 300 Ugandan shillings (0.12 USD) per head.

Back of the cinema.

Front of the cinema.

To give you a better idea of how the grid looks today, I have taken a video which follows the wires from one client to the power station. You should get a sense for the type of town this is.

Control station. Much more packed now.

Fuse rack #1.

Wires running from the roof.

Quite a few customers are in this direction.

In the interview, Alex first gave me something to think about. He noticed that some wires were starting to become non-conductive and upon dissection would turn out to have very weak cracked copper threads as well a dust inside the wire which looks like ash. He said this only happens to the negative wires.

            Although I cannot be sure, my guess was that too much current was passing through the negative wires and very slowly breaking them. If you see this post you will see our grid design which has a dedicated wire for each positive line to a lamp but a communal negative for many lamps. We required this design to implement our fuse system to stop clients from drawing current beyond the amount they have paid for. Each lamp draws 135 mA and so I told Alex to put only 4-5 lamps per negative wire. After that he can just send another negative wire. Hopefully this solves the issue.

During the interview I learnt that Alex currently has 10 clients and had more prior to now. In the past he has had to disconnect them due to paying their bills. Alex said that in the first and second week of not paying he would just warn the customer. In the third week he would remove the client’s fuse at the power station and so they would still have the hardware but no light. In the fourth week he would remove the wires, lights and switch. The hardware could then be used on a new client. I think this is a pretty good policy and apparently these threats have turned some people into regularly paying customers.

I asked Anita, who is a coordinator for the Foundation of Sustainable Development, the group and Alex why some customers did not pay. Was it because of a lack of money? The cost is only 300 shillings per day but perhaps this is a lot for some people. They all gave me the same answer which was that everyone has the money for this service but for some it is not a priority. It definitely is a priority for some clients as I'll discuss later but for some they have a different mentality. It was explained to me in this way – some people understand that they have lived there for many years without electric lights and only enjoyed the lights for maybe 1 month. If they get disconnected it’s not such a big deal because they know that they can just continue as they did in the past. I guess that is fair enough but that is an interesting thought when in many cases the Malembo Microgrid service is a much cheaper alternative than other lighting methods.

Next I asked how Alex uses the manual as I was very interested to see the impact of it. I know that Baale, the chief of phone repair, founder and treasurer of the youth group, takes the Lugandan edition manual absolutely everywhere he goes. Lydia believes that he sleeps with it every night. So Alex said that he will refer to it when he forgets something technical. I asked for an example and he said the most frequent thing he looks up is the section explaining how to use the volt meter. This makes sense since he has to use the meter a lot to check on the system’s health and also wire people up. Great to see that the manual is useful and the Lugandan translation was worth it!

On that - I was speaking to my host brother (grade 10) last night and asked if he knew of any science books which are in Lugandan. He said that he had never seen one and I know that in university they use only English textbooks. I have a feeling that our manual is the only Lugandan book on electrical engineering that exists.

Client Interviews:

Interestingly, 9 out of the 10 clients are shop owners. Each shop owner has a duel room complex which serves as a shop and a home. Only 1 client has a light exclusively for their home. Some of the previous clients did use a light for their house but they seemed to be the ones who did not pay. Shop keepers are the ones who pay is the general rule.

Below is a bunch of collated results based on all three interviews but differences between each have been outlined. Two of the clients owned food/drink shops and the other client owned a salon.

Each of these clients pay 9,000 shillings per month which is roughly 3.6 USD. Each client, when asked, stated that the price was good but one client playfully told us that “it is good, but it should not go up. Keep it like this.”

The first two clients were quite close to the power station. Probably only 20 meters of cable was needed between their light and the battery. They both said that the light was bright enough for their purposes. The third client who is very far away (bearing in mind that this is a 12 V grid) said that is also bright enough which I did not expect. I assumed the voltage drop across the wires would have kicked in enough to cause a decent loss of brightness.

When asking about a negative of the service one of the clients stated that after a cloudy day/period the lights can be quite dim and so fixing this would be very helpful. Alex does not charge for nights which give very dim lights and in fact will sacrifice phone charging services in the day if it is cloudy to preserve as much energy as possible for the lights at night since those are under written contract. I really like this sort of customer care that Alex gives.

Before these lights were installed one client used a kerosene lamp each night and the other two used a torch (“flash light” for the North American folk). The client needed 2 kerosene lamps each night. One for the shop and one for her bedroom which cost her a rough 1,000 shillings per day in kerosene and each lamp costs 11,000. Considering she now pays 9,000 per month this is far better. The other two clients used torches that cost 4,000 a piece and would cost 400 shillings in batteries each day. This is 12,000 shillings per month and so again the microgrid is cheaper. It was noted that the mircogrid’s LED light was better because it lights up a very wide area while the torch was quite directional and irritating to use because you had to move it around a lot which was a hassle. Also, apparently these torches were quite prone to breaking. Probably yet another case of dumping ultra-cheap Chinese products.

There is a clear health benefit by allowing someone to not have to use a kerosene lamp every night of their life. Additionally there may be an environmental benefit by giving consumers an alternative to buying small batteries every day for a flashlight however I don’t like to make such judgments because the microgrid on the other hand uses solar panels, wires with plastic sheaths and a lead-acid battery. Fabrication of solar panels is intensive and lead-acid batteries are pretty tough to recycle. Who knows which model is more environmentally friendly?

Both of the shopkeepers who had the food and drink shops said that they used to close between 7 pm and 10:30 pm.. Now they pretty much always stay open till midnight. The salon owner also confirmed that staying open later was easier and all three clients agreed that more customers come at night when the place is well lit up. On shop owner stated that she earns 45,000 shillings extra per week since the light was installed. This, on top of the money saved on batteries for her torch, means that she has an additional 183,000 shillings per month which is 73.2 USD. This is possibly the most impactful statistic that I collected.

The client with the salon noted that although there lamp is bright enough, the few people who have private solar panels in this town have very bright lights. This is an alternative available to the more wealth villagers.

Other Notes:

As we walked around Alex pointed out a set of wires to us that he wants to move to higher rooftops or inside the houses they run over. The threat at the current stage, where the wires are quite low, is theft. Some people have been stealing the wires and some of the sugar connectors we used to splice together wires. I asked what people did with the wires and apparently people use them for rope on their fishing boats (remember these are sort of large canoes) or even an ad-hoc switch for their outboard motors.

System Inspection:

The system in Malembo was in great shape. When I visited it was a sunny day and it was halfway through the day. The battery had already approached a point close to full charge. I measured a voltage of 13.25 V across the terminals and this was with a load of 6 phones on charge. The solar panels still gave a steady voltage and were measured at 19.54 V. All the connections looked solid. Sugars were being used and connections which were bearing lots of current used double wires. The racks of fuses were still in order and apparently only 1 fuse blew during the whole time – 6 months now. The cause is not known but at least this means that we have not had people trying to connect clandestine loads to the grid without permission.

Explaining the Boost and Buck Converters:

This sort of technology and why it is important was explained in this post. I do not have the circuits here yet but a demo pair come in the mail soon which I can use to demonstrate to them.

Junior explaining to Alex what the boost and buck converters will do.

Junior going over the diagram.

Other members and Baale looking on.

What was also discussed was how they physical implementation of these circuits would go. Fuses cannot go on the communal 32 V side of the grid and so fuse racks will need to be placed at the location of the buck converter which will take the voltage back down to 12 V. Housing the fuses and buck converter in a remote location will be tricky considering that we have already experienced theft. One possibility is putting the hardware in a locked bock on the very peaks of a roof. Alternatively, if there is a house which belongs to someone trust worthy we may just put the circuitry there. Perhaps we will offer them a free light with no bills. That will cost us very little especially since they will have the step down converter right there at their place. I am letting them think of a way to deal with this issue and I think they will be able to after some planning and thinking.

Return and Results

I arrived in Uganda for the second time now. I made my way out to Kalisizo where I live and then out to Lwemodde where the youth group is based. I was very happy to see them all. Not much has changed except their shop is now officially on the grid. By official I mean they have not connected themselves through thin invisible wires but they actually have a meter too. I asked them why they still use their solar utility node and they said that their power will invariably go out from Friday to Sunday. The 100 AH battery and the 100 W of solar panel that they have will last them all three days to provide lights to their shop and a few other houses/shops as well as keep their phone charging buisness going.

They still have excellent organization and great community vibe. People can come to their place and watch TV for free or just chill indoors. Since two of the members, Baale and Betty, both have positions on the council of their local area they are forever doing administrative work. Yesterday they were compiling a list of NGOs in the area, their activities and contacts.

On my first afternoon I just caught up with the group and explained what I hope to do with them over the next few days. They supplied me with  a report which they wrote which outlines the 'successes' and 'challenges' they faced with both solar energy and internet while Lydia and I were away. It's interesting how they used the word challenges instead of failures. Below are photos of the two page report. Click to enlarge.

Page 1 of report.

Page 2 or report.

The next post will be about the data that I collected in Malembo. I spoke to Alex who operates the grid, some clients and explained the boost and buck converters to the group.

Mission 2

So thanks to university debating which recently sent me to India, I am in a somewhat good position to visit Uganda before I make my way to Turkey for an exchange program in Istanbul. I will be in Uganda for just 1 week and so it will be exciting to see how the group and the grid is going.

This is a draft list of things that I will do over this week.

• Document any expansions on the grid since leaving Uganda.
• Interview some of the grid clients who use lights at night.
• See what new practices in grid maintenance have emerged or which practices have deteriorated.
• Make preparations for the boost and buck converter upgrades (more on this below).
• Reconnect them with internet. Apparently they lost connection due to issues with their plan - sure this is something they could sort out.

Boost and Buck Converters:

Since the grid we are running is only 12 V there is very large loss incurred when running current over long distance. Power lost will be the voltage drop over the wire multiplied by the current. Since we are using a low voltage we need a relatively high current to get the target amount of power. This theory can be condensed by the following equations:

V = IR .... 1

P = IV .... 2

Sub 1 into 2 and we get: P = I²R. To minimize power loss we need to minimize current. A great demonstration of this principle is here, a video by Julian Ilett.

We have ordered a DC to DC boost converter which steps voltage up and also a buck DC-DC converter which steps voltage down. Both of these work by using a MOSFET to periodically switch an inductor. By changing a pot on the board you can change the frequency of switching and therefore change the output voltage.

It is unlikely that we will have the circuits delivered to the FSD Masaka office by next week so we will just teach the Lwemodde youth group how these circuit work and suggest ways to implement them into their grid. When they arrive they can instal the converters. The basic idea will be to power buildings very close to the power station with the standard 12 V directly from the battery. For areas further away we will step the voltage up to 32 V and then step it down in another part of the village to 12 V and distribute from there.

Some interesting innovation will need to come with this upgrade. Perhaps some isolators for our power lines. May not be necessary at 32 V but it is good preparation if we ever step up to a higher voltage. We will need to make boxes for the step down converters and ensure that they are not tampered with. The converters will need to be strategically placed for efficient distribution and we will need to prove good heat dissipation for safety. Hopefully those massive heat sinks prove effective. Throughout the week I will be blogging to track all progress and learn how the grid has operated since myself and Lydia left the area.

Wrap Up of Mission 1

This post will just summarize our work in our first visit to Uganda. We began working on the solar utility node in March 2013 by prototyping in Duke's engineering labs. By the end of May we had a circuit that could distribute solar power and make measurements on solar output and battery charge status. 

I (Julian) was in Uganda for 6 weeks and Lydia was there for 12 weeks. We were deployed in Lwemodde in the southern district of Rakai. The youth group who took on our business was comprised of local people who all shared a common interest for electronics. Some were builders and some were farmers. They were all very friendly people who had a great sense of community. They had log books of transactions for their phone charging and repair business as well as a written constitution. It was very enjoyable to work with them.

By the end of our time there they had two netbooks at their shop used to provide internet and computer training to the locals. Additionally they oversaw the operation of a solar power grid in a fishing village called Malembo. This grid used two 100 W solar panels to distribute 12 V DC to power LED lights to shops and houses. Additionally they could provide phone charging services at the power station.

It was tremendous fun to set up power lines and make connections in peoples houses. There was a very high demand for lighting in the village which proved that this was going to be a sustainable business. Working in Uganda was all about making robust systems which were intuitively accessible to people. The people from the youth group loved to learn things. Some of them would read the text book we wrote for hours and hours to try and understand electrical theory as thoroughly as possible. There was a lack of resources but given the chance these villagers were very responsive. Having our book translated into Lugandan was a key.

Retrospectively this was a very enriching experience and something I would recommend any engineer to do. I learnt a great deal and really solidified concepts from the classroom in a way that on campus work could never achieve. Power engineering involved lots of solutions to little challenges. I hope to return very soon to see how it has all progressed.