The Lideke Wery Educational Institute had been experiencing some problems with the power supply. The power system in Sri Lanka is often hit by thunderstorms, which presents several problems for the school. One is that the computers of the ICT educational project do not work without electricity. The other is that it becomes unbearably hot inside the school when the air-conditioning is down. A lot of valuable lesson time was being lost due to this problem, but the Marthe van Rijswijck Foundation was fortunate enough to be able to offer financial support to fix this problem.
The best solution in this case was repairing the existing independent power source: solar panels. Not only does this solve the existing problems by no longer being solely grid reliant, it also allows for the opportunity to greatly reduce costs and perhaps even to make a little additional money for the school if they become net power suppliers.
The solar system is working again thanks to the project and this works well as a backup system. The Charger Controller, Inverter and Surge Protection from the old solar system were damaged, these have been replaced. Batteries (UPS) are being charged by solar power, when a power outage occurs the PC’s and air-conditioning can run on the UPS. By the end of 2015 the school should be running entirely on solar power.
Due in small part to the solar panels repaired with funds from the Marthe van Rijswijck Foundation, 82 students were able to participate in the English classes, supported by 6 full-time staff members.
