The Virtual Foundation - your donation makes it happen

Bright Lights, Quiet Nights; Solar Energy for Nepali Community

Region: Nepal, South and Southeast Asia
Author: Lotus Energy Pvt. Ltd., Kathmandu, Nepal
Consortium Member: Peter Riggs
Status: Completed - Final Report Budget: $2500 Collected: $2500 Needs: $0
Result: The Solar Electric Lighting was installed in the Buddhist monastery in November, 1998. It provides a clean source of indoor light, and improves human health (vision and lungs) by eliminating the indoor burning of wood and kerosene.
Donors: Professor Nobuo Ota & students at the Chiba University of Commerce, Japan; assisted by Dr. Takemi Ichimura of Tokyo Life Science Laboratory [October 1998]
Comment: This was truly an international cooperative venture between local communities and a motivated Nepalese enterprise with funded by Japanese donors.

Project Need

Throughout the Himalayan region are hundreds of remote Buddhist monasteries. Besides being the spiritual centers for rural mountain communities, Buddhist monasteries are responsible for much of the education in the remote Himalayas. But these communities and their monasteries rarely have any electricity or light to study by. These Monastic centers commonly obtain light from kerosene or wood. Burning these fuels indoors causes numerous health problems including lung and eye diseases, and the dim light they produce leads to sight problems in many older monks.

About Tangden

The Tangden Monastery is located in Humla district, in northwestern Nepal, approximately a 25 day walk from the nearest road. The monastery and the surrounding village is approximately 3700 meters elevation (12,000 ft), in a saddle overlooking a steep rocky valley. Like most remote Buddhist monasteries, Tangden receives no funding from aid projects or international donors that give money to Nepal.

The monastery is an ancient community-run collective. The monastery is completely run and maintained by farmer-monks and farmer-nuns who work in the fields in the daytime and perform religious activities in the evening. Even though they don't have the luxury of being full-time monks or nuns, many Tangden Buddhists have achieved great spiritual advancement, and a considerable number have taken extended retreats (up to three years) for prayer and study.

The people from Tangden have little money to buy kerosene or candles. Instead, for lighting they burn small sticks of "fat wood" that has a naturally high concentration of turpentine. This wood provides light, but also makes considerable smoke and sparks. Most of the residents have respiratory problems, and many have tuberculosis, exacerbated by smoky conditions inside their dwellings. While the Humla district is generally well-forested, local deforestation in Tangden is an environmental problem, and makes wood gathering a time-consuming chore.

Solar electricity

Solar electricity offers a clean, bright alternative light source for monks and nuns, children, and families to study and perform religious rituals after their day's work in the fields is over. Solar electric lighting systems convert the energy from sunlight into electricity. This energy is stored in batteries, and can be used at night to power efficient compact fluorescent electric lights. Solar lights have no smoke or flame, so they are healthier and safer than kerosene and wood. Many Lamas are overjoyed by the fact that no insects are killed by the light as is the case with open flame light sources.

Project Implementation, Goals and Expected Outcomes

The Tangden Monastery Solar Electric Lighting Project will provide a solar electric lighting system for light at the monastery building at Tangden, as well as lights for surrounding meditation retreat buildings. The solar electric lighting system will be installed by Lotus Energy. The company will also provide training to the Tangden farmer-monks and nuns for maintenance and basic repairs of the solar electric system, and will warrantee all system components. Lotus Energy is a Nepal-based company that manufactures, installs, and services solar electric equipment and provides training for solar electric systems users throughout the Himalayas. They installed over 550 solar electric systems in 60 of Nepal's 75 districts.

The Tangden villagers will provide labor for carrying the system components to Tangden from a helicopter landing pad 10 hours walk away. They will also aid in the installation of the system, and provide living accommodations for the renewable energy technicians.

Short term goals for the project include improving the light available in homes for evening activities including study, prayer, and religious ceremonies. The solar electric lighting system will reduce health hazards from exposure to woodsmoke, the labor used to for wood gathering and chopping, as well as the environmental impacts of wood cutting. In the long term, this project hopes to expand to include other monasteries throughout the Himalayas in Nepal, Bhutan, India, and Tibet. Since monasteries play a central position in many Himalayan communities, renewable energy technologies that are successfully adopted here will facilitate the appropriate adoption of renewable energy technologies for household use. This, in turn, is expected to improve the conditions for health, education and well-being, without negatively impacting the fragile Himalayan environment.

Budget

Solar electric system - 20 lights $3,000
Transportation (from Kathmandu to Semikot) $200
Installation (30 days, two technicians) $900
Followup service and project evaluation $200
Publication of the report $200
VF Administrative Cost (10%) $450
Total $4950

Special thanks to Peter Riggs, who brought this project to the attention of the Virtual Foundation.

Photographs generously donated by Thomas L. Kelly. Thomas Kelly has worked throughout the Himalayas and South Asia for the past twenty years. His wife Carroll Dunham is an anthropologist. Together they have lived and worked closely with the residents of Tangden in Humla District, NW Nepal. They currently reside in Kathmandu, Nepal. Their photo books include:

All published by Abbeville Press, New York, NY, USA.