Electrification of a local shop in Handew – Jijiga, Ethiopia
During January 2015, the Rural Electrification Research Group of NTUA along with V3 power (UK) and Nea Guinea (Greece) joined Wind Empowerment and Mercy Corps Ethiopia, in order to implement a rural electrification project in Jijiga, in Ethiopia’s Somali region. The project’s main goal was to provide productive uses of energy from off-grid renewable energy systems using locally manufactured small wind turbines and solar panels, as part of Mercy Corps’ program PRIME (Pastoralists’ Areas Resilience Improvement through Market Expansion).
The rural settlement of Handew
In this context, the local shop of a rural settlement in Handew, 15km away from Jijiga, was electrified using a 3m rotor diameter locally manufactured small wind turbine, installed at 12m hub height, and 300W of solar panels in order to provide electricity for mobile phone charging, lighting and refrigeration of beverages in the shop. The off-grid electrical system consists of a 500W inverter, a 24V 300Ah battery bank and a diversion load charge controller. A data logger has been installed along with the system in order to measure the wind speed, using an anemometer on the wind turbine tower, and the current provided to the shop loads. The shop’s load profile will be logged and then the power curve of the wind turbine.
Lights in the shop
The electrical system board and the battery box
The small wind turbine used in the installation was manufactured locally at the Jijiga Polytechnic College during a 7 day course with 22 participants. Graduates, students and teachers of the college participated in the course which included theoretical lectures on small wind turbine technology and applications and practical workshops on small wind turbine construction. The practical sessions were organised in three working groups. The woodworking group was carving the three blades of the rotor out of wood, the metalworking group was fabricating the steel frame of the generator and the furling tail, and the generator manufacturing group which winded the coils of the stator and fabricated the magnet rotor disks.
Preparing the stator moulds
Welding the steel frame
Carving the wooden blades
The wind turbine assembled in the workshop
The wind turbine was then installed with the course participants in the rural community of Handew, along with the solar panels and the electrical system. To see more photos of the project click here.
The wind turbine and the solar panels on the roof of the shop
Wind resource assessment – Semara, Ethiopia
In preparation for the next phase of the project, a wind resource campaign was initiated in the university of Semara in the Afar region, with the installation of an anemometer and a data logger.
Anemometer mast and data logger installed in Semara
Rural Electrification Research Group 