Solar Trials

Spending time resting on the porch where there is
some breeze when the power is out for long periods.

We have spent the last two months thinking about and looking into solar power for our home. We are very interested in doing what we can to reduce our carbon footprint. We are interested in solar for three reasons. 1.) to be an example for the community of the value of using solar instead of electric. 2.) to do our part to take care of the Earth. And 3.) to give us more consistent electricity.

We do not know the future, but we expect to be in the Sahel at least another two to three years. That is too short a time for solar to pay off for us, but we would plan to give the equipment to the church if we do move elsewhere. Still there are more steps to take to make it possible, but we are hoping in a month or so to have solar installed in our home.

As we’ve looked into it more, we have found that we’re better positioned to do solar power than most of the other internationals that we know here because we don’t have a large chest freezer or multiple AC units to run. We probably couldn’t make it reasonably priced to run our one AC unit on solar, so we would use the power company still for things like that when we need them. But, actually, the more we’ve discovered, it is going to be a lot more expensive than we wanted to have solar power for 12+ hours a day mostly because of our fridge. So now we are thinking smaller scale. If we could even put a fan and a light hooked up to solar in the three rooms we use the most (2 bedrooms and the school room), then we can have the essentials covered all day and night whether there are power cuts or not, and maybe even take a reasonable chunk out of our electric bill.

-- La Maestra