Revised Topic 3. Rural Projects, Economic Viability & Sustainability
Access to reliable power for electricity generation has been and continues to be a challenge for small-scale rural and remote communities. Today, the rising cost of petro-fuels is clearly another wake-up call to redouble efforts aimed at ensuring that the energy needs of these communities are being met.
Renewable energies provide one means of addressing this challenge, particularly for those communities which are not on the national power grid. Possible technologies include wind turbine, micro-hydro, solar and human/animal powered equipment.
Equally important though is to note that by employing devices which themselves have low-power consumption levels, the power requirement needs of communications can be reduced. Consequently, more devices can be powered with a given level of power generating capacity. An example, which comes immediately to mind are energy-saving bulbs, however, a variety of electrical components ranging from computers to radio transmission/receiving equipment are being designed with built-in power saving and low-power consumption features.
The following websites provide some examples of projects and products that incorportate low-energy and low-cost ICT devices as well as information on renewable energy generating equipment that can be developed and installed by rural and remote communities.
1. Ugandan experiences using low-cost Internet for rural schools
Deploying Low-Energy ICT ? A technical overview:
Low-energy Internet for Education ? Where Electricity is a Challenge
2. A list of global organizations and products that offer low cost and low-energy ICT devices for the developing world
3. Scoraig Wind Electric - a number of do it yourself plans for building small scale wind turbines
4. Information on micro-hydro turbines
5. A rural India micro-hydro project
6. ICT infrastructure projects for rural and remote communities in Africa and Asia
Paul Hector, Topic 3 Facilitator