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posted by janrinok on Thursday December 22 2016, @06:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the got-to-have-my-MTV dept.

When power goes out in the rural town of Soroti in eastern Uganda, store manager Hussein Samsudin can only hope it won't go on so long it spoils his fresh goods.

Another shop owner, Richard Otekat, 37, has to pay a neighbour hourly to use his generator during blackouts as he can't afford to buy one himself, while others simply go without.

However residents of the town, surrounded by thatched huts, rivers and grasslands, hope a new solar plant, which went into operation last week, will bring an end to their electricity woes.

The $19 million (18-million euro), 33-acre solar plant—the first of its kind in East Africa—can produce 10 megawatts of power that is fed into Uganda's national power grid.

The project is crucial as Uganda seeks new ways to bring electricity to the 80 percent of its 40 million-strong population that does not have access to power.

Mud hut, solar panels.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:57PM (#444818)

    > However he is one of several who will be unable to access the power from the plant, as he is not connected to the national electricity grid.

    Even if he isn't on the grid, what about the rest of his town? Surely some parts of the town have been electrified that were not previously. If a school or a church is electrified that benefits the whole community. Even if just a store is electrified and can now run refrigeration and make ice, that's valuable. Or water pumps, electrified water pumps can make water a lot more easily available.

    I don't know if any of that happened. I'm just saying there is more than one way for electricity to help a village. The US went through a similar process of electrifying the most valuable buildings first (as well as the homes of the rich).