Towards the end of the dry season, the liability of Ethiopia’s dependence on hydro-generation becomes clear to everyone living in an area holding limited political sway with the power authorities in the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. For the five days the HelioSage team was in Gambella, there was a total of two hours of grid power. For starters, this meant there was no water. For those with the resources, it was time to fire up the diesel generators to run refrigerators, air conditioners and charge the cell phones – thickening the 105 degree heat with blue-black fumes.

The majority of the Anuak tribe are still subsistence farmers. Most live beyond the reach of the diesel powered irrigation pumps along the Baro River, so they plow their fields hoping for predictable, steady rains. But the rains are rarely predictable, and the past decade has seen a marked decline in rainfall.

However, Gambella definitely has a powerful sun! Jonathan Baker (Chief Strategy Officer, HelioSage), John Koontz (Senior Project Manager, HelioSage) and Dan Chayes (Founder, CnH Construction) spent a week taking advantage of the country’s most abundant natural resource. Their main project was the installation of solar modules in conjunction with a controller and a DC powered submersible well pump. The solar powered pump now supports an organic garden (bananas, papaya, mango, potatoes, peppers, okra, tomatoes, beans, watermelon, pumpkin etc). With a reliable water supply in place, the village intends to use the garden as a test bed while preparing for a much larger farming and irrigation project. This in turn will free them of their current dependence on a single crop – corn – which does not command strong prices at the time of year the village is usually forced to sell.

The system installed includes a state of the art SunRotor controller to manage the tradeoffs between the pump’s power consumption, the solar array’s power production, and the volume of the 3,000 liter cistern (also installed during the project).To push the water from the well to the storage tank, the system uses a SunRotor helical rotor pump. Three 80 watt polycrystalline modules wired in series provide enough power to achieve 5+ gpm in optimal conditions.

Let’s just say MacGyver never faced the challenges this team did. Across four and a half days John and Dan put in more than 50 hours of work to deliver solutions built on creativity, improvisation and hustle. An unexpected bonus was the salvaging of 5 monocrystalline47 Watt Arco modules (circa 1992) found in a store room during the project. These were refurbished and now serve as an additional solar system to power a USAID clinic…as well as the dozens of cell phones that instantly appear whenever someone sees a power strip with a light on.

John also went to a remote clinic in Pokewo to spruce up an existing solar system. While there he installed high intensity LED lights in the examination room, pharmacy and the delivery room. Now the babies have a safely lit place to arrive and be cared for.

An unanticipated, ancillary benefit of the trip was the ad hoc education and training that took place, loosely titled “Electricity and Solar PV for African Contexts 101.” Dozens of men came out to watch John and Dan work and glean what they could about this new form of power. If you saw John and Dan working, you saw a compliment of Anuak crouched near them eager to understand the systems. With every step or decision John and Dan made, they explained what they were doing and why.

The team hopes to return in a year to continue training and to install a larger system in Abobo. After this initial exploratory visit, the challenges of working here are better understood; what is also understood is that solar electricity brings superlative solutions to a place in Africa heretofore underserved by everything else.

- Jonathan Baker, May 1, 2011

Members of the Anuak tribe pose for a photo with some newly arrived solar panels. Behind them HelioSage installer John Koontz sits atop the water tank stand.

A weary but satisfied team runs through its pre-construction checklist on Day 3. Pictured: Okello, Chayes, (CnH Construction), Obong and Koontz (HelioSage).

A lone solar panel provides electricity for lighting inside a hut.

A stash of 20-year old Arco solar panels are discovered and refurbished. These would eventually provide power to light an office building housing the administration of USAID’s polio eradication program.

Chayes installs a SunRotor controller at the well site. The controller manages power provided to the pump motor, protecting against burn-outs.