- Outline
A small health facility in the Eastern Highlands approx. 20 km or a 1-hour car drive from Goroka. The health center serves a population of approx. 5000 persons from surrounding villages. Current power supply is highly unreliable, resulting in breakdown of the cooling chain for medicines and the vaccine fridge. Fragile medicine needs to be fetched from Goroka, about 1hr car-drive when roads are passable and in drivable condition. Surgeries and birth assistance after sunset currently need to be performed in the light of a cellphone flashlight. This is highly inadequate for the 21st century. - Specific challenges
The Health Center lies in the immediate vicinity of the old mission station, a Primary day-school and within about 1 km from the large Secondary School, a boarding school with approx. 1500 students.
The Health Center operates on very limited resources and is the primary target for the solar power solution. The nearby schools have very different power usage patterns which do not correspond with the design foreseen for the Health Center. The schools are valid candidates for the later stages of SolSol rollout and shall be envisaged then, while the Health Center requires immediate attention and improvement of its operating conditions. - Planned solution
The Health Center consists of three buildings: the medical house with treatment rooms and the medical equipment, a smaller “outpatient house” for patients under observation and before being dismissed to go home and another small staff house as living quarter for the nurses and medical staff.
The Health Center has a rather small, but shade-free and well usable roof to support a small solar system, sufficient to power up the medical house and the other two residential buildings. Most of the usage is expected in the medical house, which operates all days and also during night time, depending on the incidents arriving in unplannable manner at any hour of the day and the night.
The battery capacity shall be dimensioned with a large safety margin to ensure availability of power throughout even busy nights. In the 21st century, it is not acceptable that a medical procedure in a Health Center is interrupted or becomes infeasible due to lack of electrical energy.
There is no suitable room within the medical house to hold the power electronics and the battery systems. All rooms are rather small in dimension and are mostly already utilized to a large extent. Possibly a small extension needs to be built alongside of the medical house to hold the power electronics, although this may expose the equipment to some safety risk. This needs more thinking and a good plan. - Estimated completion date
First half of 2025 - Required resources
The staff of the Health center is already reduced to a minimum and the local technical team may need to be recruited from adjacent institutions or villages. Approx 4 persons, men and women equally will be needed to operate, maintain, repair the system and to maintain it in good quality conditions over its expected lifetime of 15-20 years.
This local technical team will attend the SolSol “Engineering School” courses to learn and to understand how a solar systems works and how to keep it in good health condition. This includes basic training on installation of the components, maintenance, regular quality controls and administration and recording of the energy meters deployed within the system architecture.
