Researchers found several advantages after spreading free solar panels and battery systems with USB ports to 800 countryside households in Ghana.
For a household in Ghana without electricity, a small solar panel combined with a battery that offers indoor lighting and mobile phones can charge the equivalent of $ 70 a year, so that the one-off hardware costs of the solar-plus-battery kit were exceeded, researchers found.
About 800 households in the Ghana countryside received free solar packages through a study by university researchers entitled “Impact of solar lighting kits on the life of the poor‘Published by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. The non -profit Elumis Foundation, which offers solar packages to families without electricity in developing countries, worked together on the study.
Each kit was supplied with a solar panel, one or more light bulbs and a battery with two USB ports that could be used to charge mobile phones, radios and other devices such as flashlights.
The kits, each with a PV capacity ranging from 12 W to 20 W and a battery capacity from 38 WH to 56 Wh, were manufactured by Jua Energy, based in Shenzhen, China.
The researchers discovered that making solar packages available for poor populations “has several positive effects” on expenditure patterns, education, safety and safety of children. They concluded that supporting Penetration of Zonnekits is “attractive” from different perspectives.
Off-grid solutions
While one tenth of humanity without electricity is waiting for the electricity of the schedule ‘accessible, cheaper and reliable’, off-grid electricity can be an effective solution, said a joint explanation of study authors Serguei Netessine, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Bhavani Shanker Uppar.
The authors, who had previously evaluated rechargeable solar lamps in Rwanda, discovered that although solar systems costs more than solar lamps, they also have much higher benefits.
If Zonne-Plus-Battery-Kits are donated, “Our research shows that we do not have to donate more expensive kits to result in larger effects.” The kits only need bulbs that are clear enough, and USB ports to charge lights, batteries and radios, the researchers said.
Some companies sell solar packages to low income populations on a “pay-as-you-go” basis, noticed the researchers, and added that Uppari is investigating the effective design of Paygo models.
CEO of Elumis Foundation, Manny Sakellakis, said that the data collected in the study “would give us and other non -profit organizations a simpler path in fundraising efforts”, and can also be useful for solar manufacturers.
Household benefits
To evaluate how the solar packages influenced the 800 households, field officers collected monthly data on household expenses and education for these households, and for a control group of around 200 households without sun animals, for 12 months.
The researchers discovered that households with solar packages saved on average $ 70 a year by eliminating the expenses for batteries and the charging of mobile phones, reducing transport expenditure and eliminating almost spending on flashlights and solar lamps. At the same time, the families raised their expenses for USB devices such as rechargeable flashlights.
The $ 70 in the annual savings of a family exceeded the costs of the Zonne-Plus-Battery Kits, which had an average cost of $ 51. The study did not quantify the labor costs for recruiting participating households and installing the kits.
Children in households with interior lighting driven by solar packages studied more minutes a day and received higher figures at school than children in control -households, according to the study.
Households with solar packages usually gathered their savings for one or two years, and “almost all” of these households brought an average of $ 76 to farm more land, rent more farm work or buy more farm chemicals and fertilizers.
The average household that participated in the study earned the equivalent of $ 340 a year, according to the study.
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