Digital Education, Clean Water & Solar Power

We have continued to support digital literacy for our children at the St Martins Primary school. Since the computer laboratory was refurbished and new computers installed, each student now has a computer they can use while in the computer room. This helps boost their morale and also ensure that each child can learn at their own pace.

In the month of April we undertook a survey of our current school solar system with the aim of establishing and evaluating its performance and our current needs. We have been incurring high power costs and through this assessment we have been abe to identify gaps and the best to address the same.

The below were some of the findings

• The borehole solar and running was not very efficient based on the water consumption and demand. The borehole was running more on Grid power than on solar. One of the reasons cited was the manual switching which had the tendency of leaving the pump on grid power for the most part of the day.
• A hybrid inverter was recommended for a change, this has since been done and is currently being tested. The advantage it has is that it can accomodate both Solar and the Grid with priority given to a solar power source and the Grid as the back up.
• The other solar systems are performing well and optimally though there is a need to increase the panels and battery pack to accomodate and meet the energy needs and demands of the school.

We have also had a chance to engage with a solar and electrical engineer in this month of July, having checked the systems he is convinced their performance is not as bad as we'd earlier thought and he has suggested a series of changes in the set up and configurations to fully maximize on the current system we have.

Water demand for the school with a population of more than 1000 persons is still very high and we look forward to a day when we will be able to meet our water and energy needs in a sustainable and clean way that is beneficial to our enviroment.

We will keep you updated of future progress and updates. We appreciate your continued support.

Thanks,

Alfred Aswan.