Solar Jobs & Energy - Village Minigrids in Lesotho

Hello again everyone,

I am writing to you today from the hopefully-nearing-the-end-of the rainy season here in Lesotho with some updates on our minigrid construction.

We have had a very exciting few months since you last heard from me, hosting a large number of visitors at our sites - from the European Union team here in Lesotho to internaional visitors who are on the Board of Directors for this project to a number of people who are part of the Government of Lesotho as part of the new government that was formed in late 2022.  It is of course extremely exciting to be sharing our work so broadly and especially to see so much interest from leaders in the kind of work we are doing in these remote communities in Lesotho.

As part of this we are also excited to announce that in late March we will be powering up the first village in at least one more community, in coordination with a project sod-turning and celebration.  To meet this deadline the work at Matsoaing is in full swing (as, actually, it is at all 10 of our construction sites).  Today I would like especially to highlight the work of two teams who are integral to making all of this happen.

First, our Reticulation team is comprised of 22 individuals who are trained in building electricity distribution networks:  poles, wires, and home connections.  This team is divided across all of our construction sites, and at each site they lead a team of laborers from the local community who are part of making this vision happen.  In the photos you will see what the starting point of construction and training looks like - after our team has marked out where all of the electrical poles need to be, this on-site team starts the hard work of digging all of the holes, most by hand given the challenging terrain (though when we hit rock, assisted by a drill rig that the company owns).

Second, our Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) team is comprised of 3 individuals who think about all things safety.  They are in charge of identifying risks to workers, ensuring everybody has the right safety gear, conducting safety trainings, and doing site visits every month to ensure compliance with our company safety policies.  There are over 200 workers across all of these construction sites, so this is a huge undertaking, and I want to take this opportunity to applaud the hard work they put in to make sure we are all making forward progress safely.

In my next report I hope to be able to include some more photos of customer connections at this next site and of the sod turning ceremony.  In the interim I will thank you all again for your ongoing interest and support, and wishing everyone a happy and health start to 2023!

Links:

• 1PWR website

Hello everyone,

Hoping that all is well with you since our last update.  We have been very busy here at 1PWR so far in 2022!

As you have heard about in previous reports, we have been working hard, partnered with Partners in Health, to upgrade the energy systems at 7 front lines health clinics they operate.  We have now fully commissioned all 7 of those systems (the last coming online in Lebakeng a few months back), but building on this initiative, and with the support of project sponsors (REPP, EDFI, and UN CDF), during the past months we have turned our attention again to adding new anchor customers at each of these sites - using the clinic systems as a seed from which we are expanding the minigrid.

While health clinics were the priority over the past year, we are no making effort to next serve nearby police stations, government buildings, and businesses - again hopefully maximizing on the benefit to everyone in the community.   In Mashai and Sehonghong we quickly built a few kilometers of medium voltage lines to transmit power to the nearest two schools.  These installations are the start of what will eventually reach also the households (over 9000 combined for our 10 minigrid sites under construction right now).  As part of this we had the official Sod Turning for the 10-community project, which was very exciting! There were a wide range of stakholders, including from the local community and from the central government, in attendance - and our team was even featured on TV in Lesotho!

It is incredibly exciting to see this all coming together:  starting from field surveys our team did on foot to map all of the buildings, to software put together by our engineering team to locate poles and lay out the transmission network, through procurement of 1000+ poles and miles of wire, and finally now with customers being added.  The excitement of everybody on the team for what we do is clear in their dedication to the work which is challenging in so many ways - but very worth it.

Sending best wishes for a very safe and happy holiday season,

-Matt