Gombe Reserve, TANZANIA

SAVING HABITAT FOR CHIMPS & FURTHERING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Solar Energy: Clean, Reliable, Sustainable--and Baboon-Proof

The Jane Goodall Institute on the shores of Lake Tanganyika is 30 years old, but it still looks like a summer camp. All the scattered buildings are very basic. There is no glass in the windows (only the research center has shutters), and the wire mesh doesn’t manage to keep out mamba snakes. Nor was there any reliable electricity—until now.

 The Solar Electric Light Fund spearheaded the project to bring reliable, sustainable, and clean solar electricity to provide light, run computers, and power a water pump for a tree farm and a refrigerator for storing precious research samples, vaccines, and snake anti-venom.

The project used cutting-edge solar technology, taking a quantum leap from the usual choice of compact fluorescent lighting to LEDs (light-emitting diodes). While compact fluorescent lighting is three times more efficient than standard lighting, LEDs use very little energy and give up to 100,000 hours of use.

“LEDs allow us to use smaller, less expensive photovoltaic systems,” explained SELF project manager Jeff Lahl.  The project, which included 140 lights both at the Institute and scattered over the surrounding Gombe Stream National Park, required LEDs because the energy load would have been too high for compact fluorescent bulbs.

Unfortunately, at this point, there is no savings over compact fluorescent bulbs because LEDs are expensive—for now. But Jeff suggested that costs will drop in the future, and would drop substantially if LEDs could be manufactured locally in developing countries. After all, he added, over the past ten years, the cost of solar energy modules has dropped about 50 percent.

One challenge, Jeff said, was finding access to the sun, given the densely wooded area and lack of clearings. Because it is a national park, tree trimming was very limited. The solution was to install oversized solar modules on steel poles 14 feet above ground. Mounting and wiring the modules was slow and difficult work on ladders. John McLaughlin, technical advisor at the Institute spent a lot of time on the ladder, setting up the modules to ensure there were no exposed wires. 

The greatest challenge in installing the systems was to make them baboon-proof, “so that little nimble fingers could not grasp exposed wire to hang or swing from,” Lahl explained. “One baboon troop usually moves through camp each day, and sometimes they hang out and watch.

“They love to run and thunder across the metal roofs of the research center and like to jump, sit, lie, and sleep on the few existing solar modules on the roof at the research center,” Lahl said. “They must like the smooth surface. They usually only stay on the modules for a few minutes, so there’s not big loss of power. The benefit is that their fur keeps the modules clean and dusted.”

Lahl oversaw the installation of several separate systems to avoid running a lot of wires through the jungle. Of the 16 days he spent at the institute in January 2005, he most enjoyed the three days he spent training local people before installation began. In fact, one of SELF’s objectives is to train local people to install and maintain the systems.

“Eight men and two women were trained by an excellent teacher who instructed in Swahili,” he said. “The students were very excited and couldn’t get enough. They were very hungry for education and very excited about solar energy and what it could do for their people. We had to push them out the door every night an hour after class was supposed to be over. We hired seven to help us with installation, among them two electricians and carpenter, and a mason—so we had a very good crew.”

For remote Gombe, grid electricity is a far too distant dream, with grid extension costing about $20,000 per kilometer (.6 miles)—and reliability not necessarily ensured. The researchers had been getting their light and power from a combination of candles, smoky kerosene lamps, and unreliable gas generators. The Institute’s new photovoltaic system is designed to supply electricity to operate 140 lights for five to six hours a day, and to power five computers for four hours a day. Also, the system runs an electric irrigation for a tree and shrub nursery developed by the local non-profit Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education project (TACARE). In the surrounding villages, outside of the national park, deforestation is extreme. The solar-powered pump will contribute to reversing the problems and erosion and flooding that are currently taking a sad toll.

Finally, the solar power system runs the refrigerator that contains DNA and tissue samples, medicines, snakebite anti-venom, and polio and vaccines. Polio is still present in large swaths of Africa and has in the past jumped from people to chimpanzees. Until now, the refrigerator had to run on liquefied petroleum gas, shipped more than 800 miles from Dar es Salaam (the last 15mi. 24 km by boat).

Funding for this project was supplied by The Greenville Foundation, the Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust, ConocoPhilips, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Did you know a gift of $10 buys two efficient fluorescent light bulbs for a village school, home, or clinic?
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Africa's chimpanzee population has fallen from over 1 million animals in 1960 to fewer than 150,000 today.

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