Pioneering clean power project
The venture at Mbuiru is the first of its kind in East Africa and is providing a blueprint to governments in the region for water-saving and renewable energy.
“Once the turbine turns from the running water, you divert the water back to the stream so you don’t waste water,” said Kapolon. “The big advantages of a micro-hydro plan are that you use little water to produce power, and it’s cheap when compared to other electricity schemes. It’s not very cost intensive because you are not putting up huge structures. You can generate power for one household with very little cost.”
Kapolon said the Tungu Kabiri project is capable of generating 14 Kw [kilowatts] of electricity every 24 hours. It cost about $3,500 per installed Kw, so the project cost about $49,000 to implement. In contrast, it costs Kenya more than $30,000 per Kw installed by means of conventional hydropower.
The Kenya Power company confirmed that about 60 per cent of the total electricity generated in Kenya is by hydropower, making conventional electricity extremely expensive.
Kapolon said the project at Mbuiru doesn’t directly electrify individual houses, but rather provides power to a business centre. There, the electricity charges lead acid batteries, similar to those used in cars, owned by individual households.
“You charge that battery for…six hours to seven hours. The individual owner of the battery will take it home. Then they can use it [for power] for a number of days, up to four or five days, before returning it back for charging,” Kapolon explained. “At the charging station, householders must pay a little amount, less than a dollar a time, for charging, so it’s very economical and people pay very little for electricity when compared with people living in Nairobi.”
The project benefits 200 households [around 1,000 people] in Mbuiru village.
Micro-hydro boon
Kapolon said perhaps the project’s greatest achievement has been a rise in recent years of educated people emerging from the area.
“Children are using the light to study at night. When we started the first phase of this project in 1999, there were no university graduates from this part of the world. There were not even any high school graduates,” he said. “But we have seen over a number of years now, over ten years, we’ve seen the number of graduates increasing. (Local) people are attributing this to the presence of electricity.”
Computers, such an essential part of modern education and enterprise, are also now fixtures at Mbuiru. “The electricity powers a business center, where people are able to use computers for the first time in their lives. They now use the Internet to check on the latest prices for their agricultural produce, so they know the best prices they can get for their goods at market.”
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Kapolon said agribusinesses are now flourishing in the village. “They can produce products that are required in the market. They know exactly what is needed in the market, by using the Internet.”
Electricity has also made it possible to establish grain mills and refrigeration enterprises for local food producers. “Some of these foodstuffs are perishable, so putting up deep freezers and fridges was very beneficial to the people who were producing perishable goods,” said Kapolon.
Farmers now sell more products as food that previously rotted is cold-stored, preserved and taken for sale when the market needs it.
Kapolon added, “We also now have businesses [at Mbuiru] that process oil. Some of the villagers grow oil crops, like sunflowers, and they now use electrical equipment to process the oil.”
Power has given villagers entry into the tobacco industry and an assortment of other businesses. “They use the electricity for drying of the tobacco. Currently they have opened a number of enterprises – small ones, like welding, battery charging, hair salons and mobile [phone] charging stations. They are attributing these benefits to the coming of electricity.”
Electricity from the micro-hydropower project now also drives pumps that channel water directly to the community, saving the villagers a lot of time and effort. “Getting water was a big challenge previously. They would have to visit the river all the time for water, carrying it manually in jerry cans or buckets,” said Kapolon.
Environmental impact
Despite the advantages of micro-hydropower, it has its critics. They say it harms the environment by slowing the flow of rivers and streams. But Kapolon argued, “If done properly, it doesn’t reduce the amount of water for people. You only divert the water; you don’t harvest it. You return it to the river without any major reduction to the river’s flow. But obviously if you divert large amounts of water, the impact on people will be bad.”
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He acknowledged that some micro-hydro operations kill fish when they get trapped in pipes. But Kapolon added, “We work with streams that are so small that they don’t have any fish in them.”
He maintained that correctly installed micro-hydropower projects are environmentally friendly. “They don’t require big dams to be built, which often have terrible environmental and social effects, when the dams stop river flows or cause flooding,” said Kapolon.
He pointed out that such projects largely eliminate the need for people to damage forests through collecting wood for fires. They no longer need to use “dirty fuels,” such as diesel for milling grain and kerosene for lighting.
Kapolon says the government of Kenya is very impressed with the Tungu Kabiri scheme. “The state wants to emulate its success. They want to roll out similar schemes throughout the country, so we are currently looking at various models to make sure that all of these centers will be sustainable.”
A. Find English equivalents for the following Russian ones:
1) заводь / болото; 2) расположенный в Великобритании; 3) житель; 4) фермеры, занимающиеся натуральным (примитивным) хозяйством; 5) сварка; 6) остаться недостижимым; 7) коммуникационные технологии; 8) распространённый; 9) заряжать сотовые телефоны; 10) петлять вниз по склону; 11) мимо посёлка; 12) бедный район, на который никто не обращает внимание; 13) быстрый ручей; 14) схема выработки электроэнергии; 15) течение реки; 16) запись; 17) засуха; 18) постоянно подпитываться талым снегом и атмосферными осадками; 19) проект микро-гидроэлектростанции; 20) использовать энергию падающей воды; 21) плотина / запруда; 22) отводиться через бетонный канал в огромную ёмкость; 23) трубопровод; 24) электростанция / силовая станция; 25) вращать турбину; 26) вращать генератор, чтобы вырабатывать электричество; 27) обеспечивать техническую поддержку; 28) руководить строительством; 29) местные жители («местные»); 30) обслуживать микро-гидроэлектростанцию; 31) план / проект / программа; 32) дорогостоящий / затратный, чрезвычайно дорогой; 33) возводить огромные конструкции; 34) семья (как экономическая единица) / хозяйство; 35) реализовывать проект; 36) свинцово-кислотный аккумулятор; 37) станция подзарядки; 38) преимущество / удобство / благо; 39) появляться откуда-либо; 40) выпускники университетов, выпускники школ, имеющие полное среднее образование; 41) объяснять что-либо чем-либо; 42) существенная / значительная часть; 43) устройства / приспособления / движимое имущество; 44) процветать; 45) строить мельницы и холодильные установки; 46) скоропортящиеся продукты питания; 47) морозильные камеры и холодильники; 48) гнить / портиться / пропадать; 49) сохраняться в замороженном виде и браться на продажу; 50) урожаи масличных культур, подсолнечник; 51) делать растительное масло; 52) открыть сельским жителям доступ в табачную промышленность, сушка табака; 53) парикмахерская; 54) экономить время и силы селян; 55) очень сложная задача; 56) вручную; 57) пяти-галлоновые канистры или ведра; 58) сокращать количество воды, без существенного сокращения воды в реке; 59) застревать в трубах; 60) правильно установленный; 61) не наносящий вред окружающей среде; 62) вызывать наводнение; 63) снимать потребность нанесения вреда лесным насаждениям; 64) «грязное» топливо; 65) быть очень впечатлённым чем-либо; 66) развить успех дальше; 67) внедрять аналогичные схемы.
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