School of Engineering News
Arthur Shercliff Travel Scholarship helps EWB bring electricity to Tanzania
In September 2013, four students from the University of Warwick branch of Engineers Without Borders were funded through the Arthur Shercliff Travel Scholarship to travel to Tanzania. The team partnered with the charity ILoveWindpowerTanzania (ILWPT) to work in a rural community called Kemgesi.
The area around Kemgesi has suffered adversely from climate change, making the crucial income generating pastoral and agricultural activities increasingly more difficult. A cooperative of Kemgesi residents was set-up with the aim of improving life in their community, through the use of wind power as a source of electricity. The team from Warwick and ILWPT worked alongside the cooperative to construct and install a small-scale wind turbine in the local secondary school. The turbine now provides electricity for lighting, laptop charging and mobile phone charging.
In addition to the build, the EWB Warwick students conducted a training program for the cooperative members. This involved teaching theoretical lessons in the morning, followed by practical workshop sessions in the afternoon where the turbine was built.
The lessons covered the theory of the different turbine components, how to extract energy from the wind, how to operate the system, electrical circuit theory and importantly, trouble-shooting with system maintenance to insure the long-term success of the scheme. The cooperative now has the technical expertise to use the system, without the presence of ILWPT or EWB Warwick students.
There were two aims to the project; to provide electricity to the dormitories in the secondary school and to improve the capacity of the cooperative to produce and manage electricity generation schemes. The students gained invaluable experience of running an engineering development project in a challenging rural environment, which will be extremely beneficial for their future careers.
