Engineering students from Dartmouth College have designed, built, and installed two small hydropower turbines to supply electricity to a remote mountain village in Rwanda, according to Scientific American magazine. The students from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering built one of the turbines in the U.S. and shipped it to the village of Banda, a settlement of 6,000 adjacent to Nyungwe National Park. The second turbine was built on site using local materials, as the goal of the project is to enable residents of Banda and beyond to make their own turbines rather than importing expensive ones. The turbines now electrify about a third of the village’s homes, since each turbine can charge 30 of the batteries a day that residents use to electrify their homes. A charge lasts two weeks. The students plan to return and install additional turbines on mountain streams to generate 1.5 kilowatts, enough to supply the entire village with electricity. Locally built turbines can provide electricity to a typical household for about $50 a year, the same price residents now pay to light their homes with polluting kerosene.
U.S. Engineering Students Bring Small-Scale Hydropower to Rwanda
More From E360
-
FILM CONTEST WINNER
In the Yucatan, the High Cost of a Boom in Factory Hog Farms
-
INTERVIEW
In the Transition to Renewable Energy, China Is at a Crossroads
-
E360 Film Contest
In India, a Young Poacher Evolves into a Committed Conservationist
-
E360 Film Contest
The Amazon Rainforest Approaches a Point of No Return
-
Biodiversity
Shrinking Cod: How Humans Are Impacting the Evolution of Species
-
Cities
‘Sponge City’: Copenhagen Adapts to a Wetter Future
-
INTERVIEW
On Controlling Fire, New Lessons from a Deep Indigenous Past
-
Solutions
Paying the People: Liberia’s Novel Plan to Save Its Forests
-
OPINION
Forest Service Plan Threatens the Heart of an Alaskan Wilderness
-
INTERVIEW
Pakistan’s Solar Revolution Is Bringing Power to the People
-
Food & Agriculture
In Uganda, Deadly Landslides Force an Agricultural Reckoning
-
Energy
Why U.S. Geothermal May Advance, Despite Political Headwinds