Aims
- Reliably generate 1.5 - 2.0 kW renewable, hydro electricity
- Supply the hamlet of Balimtar with electricity to replace their existing expensive and temperamental, grid electricity
- Teach the local community about the hydro plant so that they can operate and maintain it for years to come
Plan
Background
Dhawa village is located in the Gorkha district of rural Nepal. It now has limited access via road and although it was connected to the national power grid in 2011, the electricity available is hopelessly unreliable - with severe load shedding and a violently fluctuating voltage.In Dhawa's main community school Shree Prabhat Secondary School (600 children) Learning Planet installed the community's first power source - a 2.2kW solar installation - with an award from the Environ Foundation in 2011. In the Hamlets surrounding Dhawa, the small feeder nursery and primary schools are in a terrible condition, and have no reliable energy. Learning Planet is trying to rebuild these schools and address the energy problem. The largest of these hamlets is called Balimtar - where the nursery School takes children up to 6 years old who are too small to walk up the mountain to Shree Prabhat.
Learning Planet would like to provide at least 500W of reliable locally generated electricity for Balimtar Nursery School, which would be used for computers, a Mesh wireless network, audiovisual teaching aids and LED lighting for the school and each of the 27 houses in the village.
Two potential sites for pico hydropower systems were originally identified by a team of local people. The sites were predicted to have the potential to produce around 1kW and 400W respectively in monsoon season and about half that in the dry season. It was intended that these two sources would be combined into a single source to produce the needed power for the schools, with any excess power being supplied to local houses.
Above: one of the high head sources that was originally identified as a possible option to use for the system