The power to chill

The next three weeks will bring some big changes at our office in Mzuzu. We have a container coming from the UK – yesterday we heard that it has landed in Dar-es-salaam in Tanzania and it should be here by 10th October. The container contains 25 Coolrun pods which will enable refrigerated and frozen goods to be transported around Malawi. We will use the pods to transport fruit and vegetables to the larger markets of the capital city and we are working with Lilongwe dairy who will transport their products in the other direction. The pods will also act as selling points for our women traders, meaning that they will no longer have to carry heavy loads on their heads and they will be able to sell much more per day, increasing their incomes. These pods which will arrive shortly are the very first Coolrun pods in Africa, not just in Malawi, so you can imagine the excitement about this innovation. Our friends at Coolrun in the UK have a vision for a Hub in each city in Malawi so refrigerated and frozen goods can move around the country without the need for refrigerated lorries.

But that’s all in three weeks time. Right now we are busy preparing the way to transform our site into the Coolrun Hub for the Northern Region. I am travelling with a volunteer, David Lee, who is an electrical engineer. As I write this, our compound here is a hive of activity as David organises the relocation of our solar system and all the controls and batteries that go with that. This is not an easy task but he has it all organised so we can make the move with minimal disruption to our power supply.

Our solar array currently sits high above one of the chilled containers and this makes cleaning the panels a tricky task. In fact, one of the first things we did on arrival was to clean the panels of the dust that is so prevalent here, and this resulted in an increase of a third in power generated. So, as we are now moving the array, we are siting it at a much lower level to facilitate regular cleaning. Today was the day for digging, mixing concrete by hand and setting in the pillars for the solar array frame.

Our Hub will consist of three 40 foot containers and one 20ft container, all fully insulated and chilled and entirely powered by solar/battery energy. The first two containers are here on site and the one transporting the pods from the UK will be staying here when it arrives. Right now, our biggest challenge is that there is no crane in Mzuzu so we are working on devising a way to move all the containers to their final locations on the site. There’s talk of jacking the container up and putting it on rollers, so I’ll make sure my hire car is parked well away when that’s happening!