the Apeironian

The Eagle has Landed

Executive Summary:

The installation of the solar power project at the Senior School has been completed. There were some electrical design changes, but the end result is very robust and satisfactory. Many thanks to all who contributed time, work, and money to this project!

The Details:

I found waiting for the Peace Corps to transfer the money to my account unacceptable, so I leveraged a temporary funding mechanism against the presumably forthcoming Peace Corps wire transfer. UPDATE: the PC money has arrived. Armed with that loan, my local electrician counterpart (Banu) and I planned to travel to the Kombo (“big city”) area to buy all electrical supplies for this project. Our initial plan was for me to hitch a ride on an NGO vehicle on Thursday the 17th, and Banu and Ansumana (the School Management Committee Chairperson and official community counterpart for this project) would follow on Saturday in Ansumana’s private vehicle. We made a backup plan for Banu to come down on Sunday using public transport (taxi-bus or gele-gele).

I arrived in Kombo on Thursday, and spent all of Friday hitting every solar power shop in the area searching for the perfect inverter and batteries. If I had known what a battle it would be to source an appropriate inverter for this project, I would have imported one a long time ago. Eventually I located the perfect one. I also located a few battery candidates. My favorite batteries were American imported, top quality sealed VRLA (valve regulated lead acid) AGM (absorbed glass matte) models, and were HUGELY expensive compared to what I had budgeted. I decided to get four of these outstanding batteries instead of 10 cheap ones. My theory is that the extreme heat up here would kill 10 cheap batteries long before their capacity advantage came into play over the four higher quality ones. All the other supplies were readily available at various shops.

Saturday came and went, with no word from Ansumana. I was disappointed, but now I’m over it. True to his word, Banu came down on Sunday, and we met at our chosen shop Monday morning. Apparently Banu and the shop operator are long time buddies, so the shop guy didn’t try to rip us off too much. Don’t get me wrong: the haggling process for all of the equipment we wanted to buy literally took all day. I got there at 9, Banu got there at 10, we made a field trip looking for inverters and got lunch, went back to the shop, and finally concluded our deal around 6:30.

On our inverter field trip, we went to the shop where I had found my “perfect” inverter. We tested it, and it didn’t work. The shop assured us that they had another one at their other location. They called and confirmed that they had one. We went there. They didn’t have one. We taxied all the way across town to a solar power integrator owned by a Dutch gentleman who didn’t have an inverter for me, but was willing to discuss my electrical design. He convinced me it was a bad idea to connect the solar charge controller in parallel with the water pump controller. Essentially, the argument went, both the pump and charge controller assume they are the only thing connected to a solar array, and modify their behavior based on the available voltage and current from the array. If two such devices are connected to an array in parallel, the algorithmic analysis of each device may become disrupted by the other device, resulting in two confused (or at worst, destroyed) devices. I decided it wasn’t worth the risk, and we went with Banu’s original suggestion, which was to separate two of the 235 watt panels for exclusive use of our solar power setup. He basked in the glory of being able to say “I told you so!!”

Here are Banu and I in the solar shop:

Here’s the receipt for all the solar power equipment:

On Tuesday morning, we returned to the shop, called a taxi, and stuffed all of the equipment in, to the chagrin of the driver. We schlepped it across town, off the paved road onto a horribly pitted, peaked, valleyed, mountainous excuse for a dirt road, to the family compound of the gele-gele driver from Darsilami (the next big town East of Diabugu). The guy wasn’t there, but his wife (who was also Banu’s sister somehow) assured us that our stuff would be safe and that he would call us with a price for transporting the baggage to Diabugu. We never received that call, but I was informed that the vehicle was departing from Westfield junction at 5AM the following morning, and that our stuff would be on board.

I woke up at 4 AM Wednesday morning, and hiked from my buddy’s place in Bakau to the Westfield junction. I got there just after 5, just before the vehicle showed up. Banu uncharacteristically arrived on time as well. All our stuff appeared to be on the vehicle, though much of it was buried, unobservable, under a mountain of other baggage on top of the vehicle. We traveled the half hour to the Banjul Ferry Terminal, where we hoped to catch the first ferry departing at 7 AM. Only one of the three ferries was operating that day, and we didn’t get on the ferry until noon. That’s six hours waiting for the ferry, plus an hour ferry ride. During the wait, I learned that the gentleman sitting in the front passenger seat was a Sarahule from Diabugu, who had lived for 20 years in Spain, and 14 in the USA. He is a martial arts instructor (Muay Thai and Tae Kwon Do), has trained in both Thailand and South Korea, and has a training studio in Brooklyn. He was flabbergasted and thrilled that I can speak Sarahule. I got his business card. He also showed up in the compound across the lane from my family compound the following day – apparently my neighbors are his family. Banu and I used the first couple hours of our wait for the ferry to negotiate the fare for our cargo. This process consists of the driver and the customer alternating standing, sitting, yelling, waving arms, acting shocked and destitute, deploring the outrageous exploitation of the other, being devoured by clouds of mosquitoes, and eventually settling on a price about half of the original quote. It was the most intense and protracted such interaction I have had the dubious pleasure of experiencing in this country.

After the Ferry Fiasco, we finally commenced the long journey Eastward. Luckily, a friendly police officer occupied the second front passenger seat in our vehicle, so we cruised through the copious and notoriously troublesome police/military/immigration/customs checkpoints with little difficulty. Here are a couple pictures of our rig stopped at Farafenni for a lunch break:

We arrived at Diabugu around 9 PM, unloaded all the baggage onto a waiting cart, and hauled it all back to my family compound. Here’s a video clip:

Thursday morning, my host Dad and I wheelbarrowed all the stuff down to the school. I called Banu, and he came down to discuss the plan of attack. I told him I wanted everything done ASAP. I asked him how long it would take us to install everything. He claimed it would take two days (it was already late morning, so Friday and Saturday). He gave me a price. I told him I would agree to the price if he and my host Dad (who is his assistant on jobs of this kind) shared the money, and if I could subtract 300 Dalasis for every day after the first two that it wasn’t completed. In return, he asked if I would add 300 if we got it done on Friday. I said sure! We got it done on Friday.

We started Thursday evening with the trench digging, filled the trench with water so it could soak overnight and soften up the ground. We finished digging Friday morning, pulled the cable through the conduit, laid it in the trench, placed and wired the batteries, secured the conduit along the underside of the roof of the Admin building, drilled holes for all cables, installed sockets, light, and switch, and connected everything. Before the sun went down, the entire system was operational. Here’s some video of the process:

Ultimately, the system works very well. When we decided to separate the two 235 watt panels for use of this project, we also decided to go with a 12 volt battery system instead of a 24 volt one. This opened up our choice of inverters as well. I have been running one and two computers on the system for the past few days, and it has behaved very well. If the users of the system show any kind of restraint whatsoever, the system should last for many years.

That being said, if the school had newer, more power efficient computers, they could probably triple the number of computers they could run on the system. The ones they have now are P4 Dells with CRT displays that suck down the power about as fast as any consumer desktop computer ever made. This is too bad, but it’s better than nothing! Who knows, maybe someone else will supply them with modern computers, and then they will really be able to take advantage of the solar power system.

Here are all the pictures from the whole shebang:

I would like to thank all of the benefactors to this project. The individuals and organizations that contributed to this project are listed here (in no particular order) – please let me know if you would like your name removed from this list!:

BRAD TREAT
MARILYN ROMERO
MS L CLERVI
LINDA RAINWATER
MARC PAQUETTE
MAREA BISHOP
ADAM JACOBS
MARK TREAT
JEFFERY MUNDY
JACQUELINE A. TAYLOR
AUDREY HARE
LINDSEY KISLINGER
ELIZABETH MUELLER
HEATHER TREAT
KEITH HODGES
BRIAN FONKEN
LEE EDBERG
KEVIN SERAFIN
MATTHEW PITTORF
ED DELLEFEMINE
JAMES L BROCK
MICHAEL MUSCATO
ANDREA L ZIMMERMAN
ROGER G DARLEY
HARRIETTE TREAT
MATT AND ERIN TWYMAN
BRAD TREAT
VINCENT L BOVE
FERDINAND D. CLERVI
ANDREA SCHLOTTMAN
BILL SEXTON
AMICS I AMIGUES DE DIABUGU BATAPHA (a Spanish NGO from Santa Coloma)

Show Me The Money

I received funding for this project from three separate sources. My original plan was to receive cash from the Partnership grant, cash from a community contribution, and donations of transportation and labor from the community. None of the community contributions materialized. The School Management Committee chairperson essentially did not produce any of the resources he promised to provide. Instead, I was able to secure the funds from two additional sources. An individual American donor provided the cash that was expected to come from the commmunity. A Spanish NGO based in Diabugu also put some money towards transportation and labor.

Here is a link to a PDF of the final project budget spreadsheet

Here is a link to a PDF of the final project report

This project was the last major thing I wanted to accomplish here, and my remaining time here is now short. If anyone has any special requests for anything related to this project or my presence here, please let me know this week.

Thanks for reading.

MC