RESIDENTS OF ACHOLI SUB-REGION EMBRACE USAGE OF SOLAR ENERGY FOR BUSINESS

Solar panels mounted on the roof of the computer Laboratory at PP Newton High School. Photo by Peter Okello

By Peter Okello

Gulu City

Solar energy comes from the limitless power source that is the sun. It is a clean, inexpensive, renewable resource that can be harnessed virtually everywhere, any point where sunlight hits the Earth’s surface has the potential to generate solar power.

Solar power is renewable by nature. Sunlight is infinite, and enough solar radiation hits the planet’s surface each hour to theoretically fill the global energy needs.
No matter how much solar power people use to generate electricity, the sun will continue to shine. It doesn’t deplete.

Mr. Oling Paul, a medical practitioner running a drug shop at Kinteny trading center in Labora Sub County Omoro district says he has been running his clinic entirely using solar energy.

“I started using solar in 2016, this solar of mine when I purchased it as a full set, the solar is 100 watts and the battery is 100 Aphs, the benefits of this solar of mine are very many, in fact I would say profit, the first benefit I have got here is it is cost effective, reason being when you buy you use a lot of money to purchase all those stuff at once but later on the gain that you will get will be too much, you will not buy anything after buying stronger appliances because it doesn’t require you to buy more if compared to generator that requires you to buy fuel every day and also there is smoke, another benefit of this solar is to the community it helps them to charge phones and I receive some small money from charging people`s phones and they pay me 500 shillings at the end, to the drug shop it provides for me light, Solar also helps in saving the environment because it doesn’t bring smoke, you only just wait for light from sun shine, and it just taps it and converts it to the electricity to be used,” he noted.

Mr. Oling, added that he now has a bigger dream of expanding his business which will heavily rely on solar energy. “My future plan is to upgrade my drug shop to a clinic where I can even admit patients because the source of light is now available and it is free of charge, it just requires enough sunshine.”

Similarly, Mrs Acora Prossy, another solar energy user in the same area who has so far used solar energy to operate her shop for a period of two years says she is happy to be using solar. “I started using solar the other year, am operating a shop with smaller items in it, Solar energy is very important in a way that it helps you to play music and also use it as a source of light, Solar is taking me well because I don’t waste money on other sources like fuel, only that sometimes when there is no sun then the power might fluctuate,” she echoed.

PP Newton High School a privately owned secondary school in Gulu district which strictly relies on solar energy has no regret for using solar energy according Lakot Monica Anywar, the head headmistress of the school.

“PP Newton High School, uses solar strictly as our power source, we have solar panels which have been backed up by a number of batteries  as you also saw and we are using it for lighting, powering our computer lab, production of exams and so on, by that you just know we have really invested a lot in putting the system in place, we have a pole of electricity just a few meters away from the school, for now we are still in the take off stage, PP Newton is less than 6 years old by that we have a lot of needs around so as we take over, we wanted to have an affordable source of energy that could help us move on as a school, that is the reason why as administrators and stakeholders of the school we found that solar will be a little cheaper for us because once it’s installed there are miner services that you will have to take other than paying electricity bills on a monthly basis and sometimes you may not have money in the school and yet the school has a lot of things to do with power, But solar is more convenient because once installed you’re sure that you’re going to handle your services,” she stated.

Honorable. Oola Patrick Lumumba, the division mayor of Bardege-Layibi division in Gulu city said that the decision by the authorities to use solar energy to light some of the streets in his division was one of the best choices ever made. “we would have not been able to pay the electricity bills if we were to be using electricity to power some the newly constructed roads in our division,” he noted.

However, Moses Rackara, one of the technicians at Radio Pacis, advises the solar users on some of the dos and the don’ts that they need to put into consideration for them to fully harness maximum electricity/power from their solar systems.

“What I have seen with most people, they actually think they want to spend less money but in actual sense they spend more money the reason being you find people having very big solar panels, very bad wire, poor quality they use to connect from solar to their systems, they also don’t have solar charge controller or solar regulator, they have direct connection to the battery and they get poor quality invertors and they don’t size their systems appropriately, you might find someone having Tv, woofer, music systems which are a bit big, machines for shaving hair, when they have all those machines, they will have a very small battery and the solar they have is not sufficient enough to charge that battery, so they use the battery all during day and in the evening already the battery is weak because they don’t size their systems properly and they buy poor products,” he saidd.

Adding that, “We have one common thing which one word we use which is system sizing, you know what you have in your house or wherever you want your solar to do, so you know that my load or system needs to be powering this, may be 5 bulbs, 1 Tv screen, may be CPU for a computer, maybe there is a laptop, phone charging, you, must know your systems well,” he stressed.