The Electrical Connection- Urban Solar Water in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania by Edbourque

Hi Edward,

Your project is very interesting and it certainly has the potential to address an important water-energy challenge for the communities of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

As part of your proposed solution, are you planning to include batteries along with the solar panels or do you believe your system can operate without batteries (i.e. only when the sun is shinning)?

Batteries can significantly increase the cost of your system and they also have other environmental impacts. So perhaps pumping water and storing it for later use could be a more viable alternative in your particular situation.

Also it would be very interesting to have a more precise idea of the cost of the system in terms of dollars per liters of water produced from the deep water wells and dollars per person (average water consumer).

And how many people in total will your specific project be able to serve? How many people will have access to clean water? And if you are planning to scale your solution to other communities in Dar es Salaam, what is the potential impact in terms of number of people who could benefit from this technology?

And in terms of scaling this system to serve several communities in the area, who will finance these projects? the local government, the world bank?

Finally, I was wondering what do you mean exactly by 2.68 kg of CO2? is it 2.68 Kg of CO2 per liter of water produced? It would be great if you can quantify CO2e emissions saved as a result of your project and also if you scale your solution to many more communities across the city and the country.

I wish you the very best with your pilot project!

Best Regards,

Carlos