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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.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 22 2016, @06:36PM
In the span of a few months, the plant will be dismantled by Ooga-boogas jacking the copper and solar panels and selling them for pocket change, or using them to construct shanties or bullet-shields.
This is why countries like Iraq and Uganda need a strongman as a ruler -- in Uganda's case, somebody like Idi Amin, who had wholesome Christian values -- to hold the country together and punish the unscrupulous. Idi's use of crucifixions and portable guillotines which could neatly fold and be placed in the backs of jeeps served as a strong deterrent to the lawless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:05PM
Your irony meter is broken:
... wholesome Christian values ...
... use of crucifixions and portable guillotines which could neatly fold and be placed in the backs of jeeps served as a strong deterrent to the lawless.
And to think some people around here wonder why liberals are worried about a Trump (and the people he represents) presidency....
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:06PM
I realize there's a lot of confusion because Christians seem to have co-oped the name of somebody who achieved enlightenment around 2k years ago and was subsequently executed, but there really aren't any similarities between his teachings and Christian values.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @09:21PM
Yes, the inbred hypocrisy with christianity is hard for a lot of people to handle, and undoubtedly is a large part of why churches are having such problems recruiting the younger generation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:57PM
I'll mod you up with the caveat that it is not all Christians. In my experience there's a broad spread of goodness not too different from the spread among the more secular. And the nicer ones are the ones that keep to themselves more.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Thursday December 22 2016, @06:50PM
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:23PM
This is why crank powered radios are a thing. They were originally invented for people that aren't connected to the grid, virtually anybody can crank the radio for a few minutes and get sound out of it and with that at least a basic understanding of what's going on in the country.
But, it definitely is interesting that the guy who gave up some of his land for the plant appears to not be benefiting from it directly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:57PM
> 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).
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:44PM
Robert Otala, 50, gave up some of his land for the solar plant, and now lives *300 metres* from the shiny panels soaking up the sun. "It is good. It has come to develop the area," he said.
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*.
Shouldn't this be accessible as part of a village-maintainable, potentially isolated grid? Maybe village-level deployment of the necessary technologies for power distribution -- layout, trenching, wiring -- is the next step, and one that requires more politically-charged (in the small scale) whole-village cooperation?
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:57PM
Huge Solar Plant Beams Power and Hope to Rural Uganda
They figured out a way to convert Obama into a beam of light?!
*insert Kenya joke here*
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:12PM
In Africa there is no hope, only rope and dopes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @12:19AM
They figured out a way to convert Obama into a beam of light?!
A thousand points... After all, like all powerful democrats, he is a moderate republican.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zafiro17 on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:29PM
The article doesn't go into the technical or policy issues that presaged the project here, but Germany gets a huge amount of credit for this, through their support of a Refit (renewable energy feed-in-tariff) that made this project financially feasible. Essentially, the government agrees to preferential purchases of renewable energy at rates that are still discounted over a long timeframe. So everyone wins. Germany supported this process in Uganda for several years, ending the program because it still failed to attract the big number of power developers that had been anticipated. That's not to say it wasn't a success. Uganda is getting way out in front of sourcing energy from renewable sources - they've got 780MW of power lined up from hydropower over the next two years, all developed with Chinese support. And watch the next three years, when nearby Ethiopia puts well over a gigawatt of hydropower online, enough to illuminate just about all of East Africa.
This isn't just development projects delivering niche solutions to the world's poor. It's African governments putting a lot of time and resources into maximizing renewable energy because the economics of it are favorable and improving.
This article might have been custom chosen for me - I used to work for a company developing power projects in Uganda. Never thought I'd see something on Soylent though - nice work Janrinok and Phoenix666.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Thursday December 22 2016, @09:24PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by zafiro17 on Friday December 23 2016, @07:27PM
Short answer in response: in over ten years working in Africa, I haven't heard Russia mentioned one single time. Turkey is active in Somalia, and China is heavily involved absolutely everywhere. But I'm not aware of any Russian interventions/projects/investments anywhere on the continent.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday December 23 2016, @01:11AM
Don't make the mistake of lumping hydro in with the 'green' sources usually cited. Hydro is stone cold rational, very profitable if the local geography supports it and has been happily turning out craploads of reliable electricity for about a century. Just look at the numbers you cite; hundreds of megawatts of clean reliable energy vs a the article we are commenting on getting giddy about ten megawatts of highly intermittent, high maintenance photo-voltaic.
The biggest problem with the solar panels in a country like Uganda is going to be replacing panels lost to theft. Think about it, they just put millions of dollars of solar panels near a village and didn't even connect it to the system. So the loss to a villager 'liberating' a panel or two to have lights, perhaps a TV and endless phone charging in their home is low and the benefit high.
And talk about a totally different lifestyle, run those numbers. A ten megawatt solar installation, that you know will be lucky to supply three averaged out over a year is said to be sufficient to power 40,000 homes, hospitals, etc. So long as refrigeration isn't widely employed, TV remains something a half dozen households share, etc. you might get by since these days all lights can be assumed to be LED. Pulling everybody to just 2nd world status is still a long way off.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:21PM
Much of the us is cancelling solar subsidies, but those subsidies are continuing in other countries. The price per kilowatt will continue to drop as the economies of scale grow.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:53PM
Would rather have a mud hut (probably more like some form of adobe--don't look down on these people, they're not savages!) with a clean, steady, reliable energy source than some 3,500 square foot vinyl-sided fuckbox running on hell knows what pumped out of the ground.
Granted this stuff doesn't (yet?) scale well to a US-sized grid, but, one step at a time. This could be instrumental in freeing smaller nations from the proxy-warfare-waging grip of larger ones who use resources as an incentive/threat.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 23 2016, @01:02PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @02:54PM
nothing is going to happen in africa if they cannot learn to build all the shit themselves.
leap frog you say?
thats jumping over a generation of technolgy that most certainly contributed to the next one.
if you don't know how to build and maintain the previous generation of shit then most certainly you will
not build and maintain a rocket to mars or a fusion reactor in africa or the leap-frog tech(*).
then again, this doesnt just apply to africa ... but to
individual humans also:"my computer is not working?" "did you turn it on?"
(*) unless they (U.N. and feel-good-people) send a star trek replicator
with enough built-in intelligence to replicate near-broken parts of itself.