By Matthew Orosz | CEO, Lead Engineer
Hello again from Lesotho!
It's been three months now of operations at the Ha Makebe minigrid, and things are going well. We've been learning a lot (including a few late-night trips out to check meters before we realized that sometimes rain clouds just interferes with communications!), and the community containues to be excited about the service. Our 8 customers are consistently using power, reloading their prepay accounts, and sending us good feedback. Our team is thrilled watching this run, and we are hard at work with the final permitting to start construction for service to the rest of the community.
In other exciting news, Onepower moved to our recently-renovated Headquarters, a factory shell managed by the Leostho National Development Corporation (LNDC), the Lesotho government agency whose mission is to foster domestic economic and industrial growth. We are in the early stages of outfitting the offices, setting up the electronics (electricity meters) manufacturing, setting up the machine shop, etc. - but it is already feeling and looking like our new home.
A few pictures below - those of you who have been following along for some years may recognize the aluminum legs on our conference table as parts we used in a manufacturing frame for an early design of our STG solar concentrator. It's truly unique to OnePower and gives character to the place where we invite partners to meetings.
The development of the 20MW Project is still progressing - right now we are on track to start construction in late 2019 or early 2020, and you will all be hearing more about that as soon as we have news and pictures to share!
Hoping that everyone is having a healthy and prosperous 2019 so far, and thank you again for your continued interest and support.
Best,
Matt
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