Why are we trying to improve access to electricity?
Less than a third of Zambians have access to electricity. In Rural areas, only 5% of Zambians have access to electricity.
Without electricity, you have to rely on kerosene lamps for lighting.
- Kerosene lamps are 10 times more expensive than electric lighting.
- They provide poor light, meaning you cannot easily study or work after dark.
- They produce a lot of indoor air pollution.
Mobile phones have become massively important in Zambia. They are used, not only for calling people, but also for news, weather reports, paying for things and banking. People have to travel long distances to charge their phones and rely on unreliable sources.
Lack of access to electricity is a problem faced by 620 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and 1 billion people world wide.
Having access to lighting and mobile phone charging changes the way people live. With access to electricity, you can easily light your home. Suddenly it’s possible for someone to read a book after 6pm. Students can do their homework and shopkeepers can keep their shops open.
With a mobile phone, you can communicate with people. You can read the news, farmers can find out about the weather, shopkeepers can pay for goods and families can stay in touch.
People have the skills and resources they need to solve this problem.
In Zambia, there is an abundance of the skills needed to solve the problem of poor access to electricity. People repair televisions and build their own amplifiers and speakers from electronic parts.
Television repair shop in the Simoson Building, Lusaka, Zambia
Amplifier production line in the Simoson Building
All of the resources you need to build and maintain electronic systems are available in Zambia. For example, the Simoson Building in central Lusaka is a national hub for buying and selling electronic components.
Components for sale in the Simoson Building
It just so happens that you can buy all of the components you need to build an electricity supply in the Simoson Building.
Some people have already started trying to solve the problem of poor access to electricity.
One person who famously built his own wind turbine is William Kamkwamba, aka The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.
William with his now famous wind turbine
William is not a lone innovator. During our time in Zambia we met Dalitso who built his own wind turbine, this time using an old satellite dish. There is massive untapped potential. People with amazing drive and skills are surrounded by all the resources they need.
We give them the missing piece, knowledge.
Having people with the right skills and resources isn’t enough. You need knowledge in order to utilise your skills and resources. This is where we come in.
We have designed a training programme that teaches students in Zambia how to build electricity supplies using local resources.
We are calling this programme Energy Makers Zambia. Over the course of two weeks, students will learn everything they need to know about generating, converting and storing electricity. Through this programme, students will learn about the different sources used to generate electricity, how to convert this electricity into a form they can use for lighting and mobile phone charging and they will learn how to store it using power banks.
We believe the best way for students to learn this is to build an electricity supply they can use in their daily lives, which provides them with useful electricity. Our programme centres around the Le1, an educational charge controller kit, which is able to provide reliable power for lighting and mobile phone charging.
The Le1, an educational charge controller kit
We introduced people to the Le1 and they made amazing things.
This was not quite what we had planned when we started. Our original idea took the form of a little black box with a little black screen on it. We thought it would be a good idea to find old motors and upcycle them into electric generators. All you would need to do is figure out how to spin a motor and you would have electricity.
An early hand crank prototype developed by young people in Zeze, Tanzania
We showed people an example of a hand crank that could be used to turn the motor. The Le1 gave you feedback on how much power you were generating and you could use this to improve your designs. What people made was much better than what we had designed. We ran a pilot of this idea in partnership with Mboni Ya Vijana, a grassroots community organisation lifting villagers out of extreme poverty in Zeze, Tanzania.
Le1 hooked up to a hand crank
Once people had completed the handcranks, we learnt, with our students, how they could use local resources to make wind turbines. We thought this would take two weeks. We showed students how to make wind turbine blades from PVC pipe and then we drew a picture of a wind turbine. Within 3 days students had built fully functioning wind turbines.
Wind turbine blades made by students in Zeze
Testing wind turbine blades using the Le1
Wind turbines blowin' in the wind
After finishing a two week workshop in three days we had some time to kill 😅
So we asked, “we have all this time, what do you want to know?”. The overwhelming response was, “we want to know how the Le1 works”.
People wanted to know how the Le1 worked because they had bought small solar systems that broke incredibly quickly. In almost every instance, it was the charge controller that broke. This is the part of the system that converts the electricity from the solar panel into a form that can be used for lighting and mobile phone charging. Some charge controllers didn’t even last 6 months after people had spent several months’ income on them. People wanted to fix their charge controllers or build their own.
Solar panels can last up to 35 years and there is a lot of sun in Tanzania. But with one of the key elements of the system breaking all the time, solar systems are not as reliable as they could be and people are having to regularly buy new systems. Different solar panels produce different voltages and charge controllers only accept particular voltages, so solar panels from broken systems often can’t be used with new systems. Therefore, there are lots of fully functioning solar panels that are being unnecessarily discarded, producing large amounts of e-waste. The Le1 allows people to continue to use these perfectly good solar panels because it accepts a broad range of voltages.
So we tested teaching people how the Le1 works
In a few days we designed and ran a workshop teaching students the basics of electronics.
Students learning about how the Le1 works
Students loved it, but we were being held back by the fact that the Le1 was difficult to understand. We had compressed the board down to as small a size as possible with tiny components and hidden it away in a black box. Building on what we learned, we redesigned the Le1 so that students could use it to understand exactly how it worked.
New layout for the Le1 making it easier to understand
Over the past two years we have been partnering with educational institutions in Zambia and the UK across primary, secondary and tertiary levels to develop our programme.
So far we have run over 20 workshops, testing and refining our idea and we are now ready to launch our biggest pilot yet.
We are now ready to launch our programme
We want to train 350 students to build electricity supplies and train 25 trainers who can deliver our workshop.
Over the course of nine months, we will be running a total of 14 workshops with students from across the country.
We will teach students everything they need to know to build a modern electricity supply, from basic electronics to programming microcontrollers.
We’ll be drawing our students from a wide pool. Anyone who has completed high school will be able to join and we will be offering scholarships to students normally underrepresented in organisations producing technology.
So what does this change?
Once students have completed our programme, they will be fully equipped to build electricity supplies.
In particular, students from rural areas will be able to use these skills to electrify their homes and communities.
By drawing on local resources and skills, students will be able to design systems which are cheaper, more reliable and more sustainable than existing systems.
Because people will have built the supplies themselves, they will be able to maintain them much more effectively, reducing e-waste and increasing reliability.
We will use the fees we charge for our course to open regional training centres across Zambia. In the future, we will also be looking to open centres across the continent.
Throughout this pilot, we will be monitoring which parts of our programme are most effective and developing ways in which we can further support students who want to build businesses or develop technology around renewable energy.
Who else is with you?
We are being supported by Energy4Impact and UKaid who, in
addition to a cornerstone investment of £2,000 will also be matching
funding (up to £6,500 for the campaign) meaning your contribution counts
x2!
We have developed close relationships with the Zambian government and are currently being supported by the National Technology and Business Centre through their Innovation Assistance programme.
We are also being supported by the National Science and Technology Council and the Ministry of Higher Education.
We were accepted onto Bethnal Green Ventures’ business accelerator, one of the world’s leading tech for good accelerators and recieved £20,000 for the development of the Le1. We are also supported by the Institute of Education at University College London through the Educate Programme.
We are working closely with the Lusaka Business and Technical College where students are currently using the Le1 in their final year projects. We have also developed partnerships with Zambian tech dons, Hacker’s Guild and Maker Hut.
Okay, I’m with you, what now?
We are launching our biggest, most ambitious pilot yet and we want you to join us in supporting young people to build the energy supplies of the future.
