The mission of best ray project is to provide energy services to Tanzanian rural areas. The PV installation in Kisimiri Secondary School is the first relevant energy service that the project has provided to local beneficiaries.
The Swill association FriendsofKisimiri had donated to Kisimiri Secondary School 16 portable computers and 8 PV panels of 120W each, together with batteries and charge controllers, to be installed in a computer room and in the school library. Nevertheless in the Kisimiri area no one had the required skills to complete the installation.
Best Ray on September 2009 has conducted a training to 12 local “fundi” to teach the basics of solar power and to make them able to install small off grid solar system. Out of 12 students, 4 had been selected, Mr Emmanuel, David from OldonyoSambu, Abilo and the David the mats Kisimiri teacher to do the installation in Kimisimi Secondary School under the supervision of the trainer.
A 5 panels array has been installed on the computer room, the panels have been connected at 12V to 5 x 200ah AGM batteries to provide power to 13 portable computers with Linux Ubuntu as OS.
All the system runs in DC, adaptors have been installed to upscale from 12 to 19V.
The batteries of the computers have been removed to reduce the required load from 60W to 22W.
The system is able to run the 13 computers for some 5hours a day.
A modem has been installed on the main computer, and one year connection fee has been paid by the project. A local network among the computers is now under evaluation.
Together with the school headmaster an agenda on computer training has been organised in order to provide some secondary students, the A level students and the teacher of the school with the necessary computing knowledge.
In the library an array of 3 x 120W panel provides the power to 3 portable computers and 4 DC lights. The library is now accessible overnight. On the computer a off – line Wikipedia encyclopaedia and other educational programmes have been installed.
The Kisimiri school is a good example of integrated efforts between 2 organisation working together. Best Ray also thanks Paolo Testa and Andrea Mandrici for their valuable help in the installation of the PV system and the IT devices.
