Thank you!

At the Solar Power Portal Awards 2015, organised by our publisher Solar Media, Dr Philip Unwin who has been volunteering at the hospital for almost ten years, appealed directly to 650 senior industry representatives. The response was amazing.

Earlier this year we introduced you to the Kamuli Mission Hospital in Uganda and how the incredible staff and volunteers there could save more lives if a solar and storage system protected it from grid failures and extortionate diesel prices. We teamed up with Dr Unwin's Kamuli Friends charity to tackle the hospital's energy problems.

“Power cuts occur all the time either due to the hospital not being able to pay the bill or due to the supply going down.  Last year 10 days out of 14 we had no power at all,” Dr Unwin told the audience at the awards. “All night time operations were carried out using mobile phones and head torches. Making Kamuli ‘power independent’ would be amazing and be such a huge benefit to them, both in the service they could provide and financially.”

The audience duly obliged with a little cajoling from host Leo Johnson.

So far we have cash pledges in excess of £5000, we have commitments from manufacturers to provide more than 50 modules, the requisite mounting, batteries and 10kW of grid-tied inverters.

In addition to all that, Griff Thomas of GTEC has kindly volunteered to take a lead on the installation and will act as project manager. Neil Buck at Brighter Green Engineering has offered to warehouse space and will also do some fabrication for the array’s power electronics in a containerised system here in the UK. Polygrid will offer further design and engineering assistance.

To make this happen we still need your support. Transportation costs, training, land works, insurance and cabling all need to be covered. Please follow the example of Segen, British Solar Renewables, Rexel Energy Solutions, CCL Components and EvoEnergy, who are among the 20 companies to have pledged support so far.

As the project comes together we’ll keep you up to date. It’s not too late to contribute either!