When we were back in Europe people asked us a lot of questions about our living conditions and about our electricity supply. If you're interested in our slightly complicated electricity supply, read on! If not, I won't be offended if you skip this post!
We have solar panels on our house. So far so good. Despite being ten years old they are functioning well. The batteries, however, which are now coming up for four years old, are as good as dead. This means, logically, that if the sun is up and shining, we have solar power. As soon as the sun sets, or on cloudy days, we don't. (Our reasons for not replacing the batteries will be explained below!)
A second source of electricity is our generator. Since it is noisy and guzzles diesel, we generally only use it for an hour or so in the evening to pump our well water, and to have an hour of electric light while we get the washing-up done and the kids washed. Bought when we moved to the village in February 2009 it very quickly developed a problem with one part which needed replacing. Unfortunately we still haven't been able to find this part in Benin (or through some research we've done in Europe) so our local electrician does a botch job from time to time to keep it going. Recently however the generator had been working less and less well so we had it serviced and the specialist discovered that the capacitor (?) had a fault. It turns out that this might be what wore out the other piece in the first place, so although things aren't perfect, we may have fewer problems in the future.
A future source of electricity will be mains electricity, but it is taking its time! The poles arrived in the village in April 2009. They were erected in October 2010. We got home from Europe in July this year to find cables, though we're not sure the work on the cables is quite finished yet:
The other question is where exactly this electricity will be generated. We've heard that it will probably come in from Togo (or even Ghana), which means it has to come a good distance before it reaches us. So although the poles and cables are in place near us, until they have also been installed between the border with Togo and our nearest town, there won't be much power coming through them. And we also need to find out just how much they will try to charge us to get hooked up (in neighbouring countries some organisations have been charged astronomical amounts and we may need to negotiate!).
So anyway, with the promise of mains electricity at some point in the future, we aren't sure it is worth investing £1000 or so in new batteries for our solar power system, and going through all the hassle of finding where we can order them from, getting them shipped/flown in, and trying to pay customs taxes (apparently we oughtn't to have to pay customs taxes because it's for our personal use, but we might have to spend a while arguing our case!).
We do have enough electricity to charge up our computers and phones, run the “knead-and-rise” cycle of our bread machine, keep our fridge going for 7 hours a day (so we don't bother trying to freeze anything), and to put the boys' fan on during their afternoon sleep. We don't have lights in the evening (except battery-powered ones or candles) or fans at night (hard during hot season!) and we do have to be thinking all the time about what to charge up when so that, for example, I have enough battery in my computer for the first couple of hours of work in the morning.
More electricity would make it easier to work in the evenings (your body and brain tend to think it's the middle of the night when you're in the dark, even if your computer's working), would keep us cooler and help us to sleep better at night, and would give us a properly working fridge and freezer. Obviously once mains electricity is here it won't be perfect, but we will always have solar and the generator, and be able to juggle between whatever works best/is cheaper!
This is absolutely not meant to be a post to make anyone sorry for us. You get used to functioning differently, and I am finding the lack of light in the evenings easier to deal with than I was at the beginning of the year. And the only thing we're asking for is prayer that the mains electricity will arrive soon, and that we won't have to pay too much to get connected! Maybe you could put a reminder to pray for us on the light switch you use the most often :o)
We have solar panels on our house. So far so good. Despite being ten years old they are functioning well. The batteries, however, which are now coming up for four years old, are as good as dead. This means, logically, that if the sun is up and shining, we have solar power. As soon as the sun sets, or on cloudy days, we don't. (Our reasons for not replacing the batteries will be explained below!)
A second source of electricity is our generator. Since it is noisy and guzzles diesel, we generally only use it for an hour or so in the evening to pump our well water, and to have an hour of electric light while we get the washing-up done and the kids washed. Bought when we moved to the village in February 2009 it very quickly developed a problem with one part which needed replacing. Unfortunately we still haven't been able to find this part in Benin (or through some research we've done in Europe) so our local electrician does a botch job from time to time to keep it going. Recently however the generator had been working less and less well so we had it serviced and the specialist discovered that the capacitor (?) had a fault. It turns out that this might be what wore out the other piece in the first place, so although things aren't perfect, we may have fewer problems in the future.
A future source of electricity will be mains electricity, but it is taking its time! The poles arrived in the village in April 2009. They were erected in October 2010. We got home from Europe in July this year to find cables, though we're not sure the work on the cables is quite finished yet:
The other question is where exactly this electricity will be generated. We've heard that it will probably come in from Togo (or even Ghana), which means it has to come a good distance before it reaches us. So although the poles and cables are in place near us, until they have also been installed between the border with Togo and our nearest town, there won't be much power coming through them. And we also need to find out just how much they will try to charge us to get hooked up (in neighbouring countries some organisations have been charged astronomical amounts and we may need to negotiate!).
So anyway, with the promise of mains electricity at some point in the future, we aren't sure it is worth investing £1000 or so in new batteries for our solar power system, and going through all the hassle of finding where we can order them from, getting them shipped/flown in, and trying to pay customs taxes (apparently we oughtn't to have to pay customs taxes because it's for our personal use, but we might have to spend a while arguing our case!).
We do have enough electricity to charge up our computers and phones, run the “knead-and-rise” cycle of our bread machine, keep our fridge going for 7 hours a day (so we don't bother trying to freeze anything), and to put the boys' fan on during their afternoon sleep. We don't have lights in the evening (except battery-powered ones or candles) or fans at night (hard during hot season!) and we do have to be thinking all the time about what to charge up when so that, for example, I have enough battery in my computer for the first couple of hours of work in the morning.
More electricity would make it easier to work in the evenings (your body and brain tend to think it's the middle of the night when you're in the dark, even if your computer's working), would keep us cooler and help us to sleep better at night, and would give us a properly working fridge and freezer. Obviously once mains electricity is here it won't be perfect, but we will always have solar and the generator, and be able to juggle between whatever works best/is cheaper!
This is absolutely not meant to be a post to make anyone sorry for us. You get used to functioning differently, and I am finding the lack of light in the evenings easier to deal with than I was at the beginning of the year. And the only thing we're asking for is prayer that the mains electricity will arrive soon, and that we won't have to pay too much to get connected! Maybe you could put a reminder to pray for us on the light switch you use the most often :o)
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