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SolarCity lighting African schools with solar free of charge
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: August 16th, 2015
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SolarCity-lighti...
In much of the developing world, the electrical grid is a rickety, unreliable tangle of wires if it exists at all. So starting quietly last year, SolarCity created a charity that installs solar arrays, complete with battery packs, at rural schools in developing countries. The GivePower Foundation has lit nearly 1,000 schools so far in Africa and Central America, a number expected to top 1,500 by the end of this year. Each solar and battery system is designed to generate and store enough electricity to light the schools for ... extending class hours. Students and community members can also use the systems to recharge their cell phones, increasingly popular in areas that never had widespread landline phone service. Hayes Barnard, GivePowers president, says, In certain parts of the world, there are opportunities to use renewable energy from the get-go. You dont have to fight the status quo thats been established around dirty energy. The foundation aims to light one school for every megawatt of solar power SolarCity installs in the United States (a megawatt is roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by 750 American homes in any given instant). Next up: lighting 200 schools in Nepal, as part of the countrys recovery efforts from this springs devastating earthquake. Barnard will participate in that installation project himself. SolarCity recruits its own employees to do much of the installation work abroad, offering the work trips as an incentive for outstanding job performance.
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