Learning to understand the energy needs of schools and health clinics, one step at a time
When working on solar projects, the lack of data relating to energy use and how much power these institutions actually need are some of the biggest challenges. This lack of understanding can mean that solar systems are either oversized (with organisations spending money on equipment that isn’t needed) or undersized (meaning they don’t provide enough power).
Through Project Jua, we want to understand electricity demand from the ground up. So we’ll keep installing RMS on each site, which means that we’ll be able to measure and track the production and energy use of each health clinic and school, and most importantly, share our findings with others who are designing health and education programmes that are reliant on equipment.
This was something we did in our pilot project where we installed 800W systems in 20 sites. It was the best solution at the time but we’ve decided that it’s unlikely to be enough to accommodate their future energy needs. So in our second phase, 250 schools and small health clinics will get 1060W systems and 50 bigger health clinics will get 2385W systems.