Spring of 2009:
The construction of a community utility centre in Susya
After much work in the past weeks we have finally completed the installation of the utility
center with the Shineran family in Susya at the end of April 2009. The center,
which serves 8 families with about 1000 heads of sheep, includes a
refrigerator and a butter making machine and is powered by a hybrid wind and
solar electricity generating system. The actual installation was the culmination of
months of preparations by the local community and the Comet-ME team - from the preliminary
needs survey, the joint definition of the system, fund raising, all the technical preparation and
construction, the tower itself which was purchased from a local welder in Yatta, to the installation
in the Shineran. We had a very intensive week which started with bringing everything to Susya,
three days in which we build all the electrical systems and a day in which we raised the turbine.
Later a shed was built to house the system and finally we brought the refrigerator (a highly
efficient one with no freezer and a volume of 500 liters) and completed all the cables and
final mountings of the equipment.
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The real proof of the concept came when we first operated the turbine.
Although the butter making machine was mentioned from the beginning we did
not grasp its importance until there was enough energy in the system to operate it.
The Shineran people had already bought one before the installation was over and the
minute we span the turbine they brought it over - it is just a big drum with an old
washing machine motor attached to it that drives a mixer - and filled it with freshly
milked goat and sheep milk. The smile on their faces when they saw it is actually working,
and commotion around the machine were enough to justify the whole project. The traditional
way to make the butter (one of their main sources of income) is to manually shake a milk filled
goat intestine for hours.
The introduction of electricity will save each family several hours of
manual labor each day.
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There is still a lot we do not know: the production patterns,
consumption patterns, the way it will affect the community,
maintenance issues, and probably a lot more "unknown unknowns".
In many ways this is just the beginning of the road for this particular
project and we look forward to see how it will develop.
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