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Bringing Light to Africa with PV Systems

Recently we’ve been privileged to take part in bringing light into people's lives in one of the world’s poorest regions. I just returned from a trip to Uganda with JHA, an American NGO that brings sustainable technologies to rural African villages. The people living there have no access to electricity, sewage system, or even clean water. They live on less than $1 a day, spend hours a day searching for water and firewood, and struggle with malaria and other diseases.

I accompanied JHA in their journey to provide solar power to the 100,000th African person, and assisted the local JHA team in installing PV systems on the roofs of primary schools, medical clinics, and water pumps.

In medical clinics, solar powered refrigerators for essential medicines and vaccines protect local children from preventable lethal diseases. Light in classrooms provides students and adults with a place to study at night and access to electricity for radio and computer use. Solar powered water pumps can provide clean water, preventing the spread of water-borne disease, currently responsible for 80% of death and illness in the developing world.

Our collaboration with JHA means that our PowerBox power optimizers are provided to enable maximum solar power harvesting and module PV monitoring in those isolated sites. Remote troubleshooting via SMS or the Internet will allow JHA to monitor the performance of their PV systems from their offices in New York and their local offices in Africa, and will reduce maintenance cost, eliminating the need to drive 3-4 hours on bumpy dirt roads just for on-site inspection. The SolarEdge system will also assist in prevention of panel theft and improve system safety.

* Click the full screen button bellow and use the < > buttons for a photo journal of our mission.