{"id":8312,"date":"2018-11-14T13:25:22","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T12:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8312"},"modified":"2018-11-14T13:25:22","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T12:25:22","slug":"power-for-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8312","title":{"rendered":"Power for the people"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read an inspiring article in TEAR times about bringing power for the people.\u00a0 The article involved a micro-hydro plant at the village of Mahadevsthan, Nepal.\u00a0 I’ve researched it a bit more on line and the outcomes are even better than I thought.\u00a0 There are number of lessons to be learnt here, but first I will give a few details about the plant.\u00a0\u00a0Mahadevsthan is located in the Dhading District of Nepal, its mountainous and reasonably remote and very suitable for micro-hydro. \u00a0 The system is 26kWp output and was installed in 2008.\u00a0 According to TEARFUND it powers 550 homes, 3 schools, businesses and a clinic.\u00a0 The paper I found puts it at less than that at around 200 homes.\u00a0 So what can we learn from all this in providing more power for the people.<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 The technology is appropriate for the place.\u00a0 Solar PV and wind would almost certainly not have worked as well. Nepal has an enormous under exploited hydro resource (about 83GWp, about 42GWp of which would be economically viable).\u00a0 Its capacity in hydro terms is about 650MWp at the moment along with some thermal plant.\u00a0 It imports about 25% of its total (rising) demand from India.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0 This is a classic market failure.\u00a0 Like many things such as new housing or sewage its not worth investors putting the money in due to very low returns but the benefits as we we will see below are very considerable. \u00a0 The money came from a variety of sources which included various Nepali development funds (its seems likely to me that this money\u00a0 was ultimately largely from overseas donors who fund these).<\/p>\n

3) There was community involvement.\u00a0 The villagers were asked about whether they wanted such a system.\u00a0 They paid for around 21-26% and took out a bank loan.\u00a0 There was no imposition from outside.\u00a0 They pay for the electricity – its not free.<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0 Its sustainable although there has been a slight drop in fish numbers in the stream used there has been no other environmental impact.\u00a0 Looking at the figures above there would be a tendency to think big and go for huge valley flooding schemes.\u00a0 Far better would be many small schemes such as this initially not grid connected but in time linked up.\u00a0 The fact that its been going for 10 years is also very encouraging.\u00a0 Its not fallen into disrepair as so many imposed technologies have in the developing world.<\/p>\n

\"13705_2018_147_Fig4_HTML\"<\/a><\/p>\n

5) Its had an enormous impact on village life.\u00a0 The recent paper looked at village satisfaction (very high).\u00a0 Both it and the TEARFUND article have shown how much its changes life for the better.\u00a0 Before people lugged kerosene up the mountain for heating and lighting.\u00a0 It was polluting, added to climate change and was straining peoples eyes.\u00a0 Now children and adults have access to computers, the internet and mobile phones as well as fridges.\u00a0 The biggest surprise to me was its time saving aspect.\u00a0 This meant people did not have to spend hours grinding wheat by hand but minutes.\u00a0 This has allowed families to start other businesses and improve their income.<\/p>\n

This is a classic market failure and TEARFUND is asking people to sign and get the world bank to fund many more of these systems.\u00a0 Sign here to extend power for the people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read an inspiring article in TEAR times about bringing power for the people.\u00a0 The article involved a micro-hydro plant at the village of Mahadevsthan, Nepal.\u00a0 I’ve researched it a bit more on line and the outcomes are even better … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[248,4],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-8312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-micro-hydro","category-renewables","tag-micro-hydro"],"yoast_head":"\nPower for the people - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8312\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8312\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8312\",\"name\":\"Power for the people - 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