Kibuye 2018

This was a really busy day but unfortunately not many pictures taken by me.  Oliver and Isaac spent most of the day taking video of EVERYTHING so I'm sure in the days to come, you will see some really good pictures and video. Today the solar team were able to complete the wiring on 4 out of 5 solar arrays and now the hospital is running totally on Solar.  This is the day we have been waiting for and we give God the glory for what He has accomplished through our volunteer team. I found this photo of Miguel Villa and his family on step one of the PowerPac that we just installed.  The date was July 24, 2017.  One year almost to the day for the installation. The biggest delays were with the inverters that had to come from Germany and caused a 5 month delay.  I came around the corner of the hospital and there were quite a few ladies that had arrived with firewood that would be used to cook for their relatives that were admitted and needed their care. D...

Yesterday we sad goodbye to six of our team mates from the past two weeks, as they began their journeys home. Thank you Alan, Paul Don, Chrissy, Dale, and Jim.  Chrissy is a visiting nurse and she is also Dale's daughter.  Her husband Brian remains here at Kibuye through this week.  Caleb is in the center of the photo and has been our team leader.  He took this group of six to Bujumbura to the airport and then picked up four, who just arrived.  They are Don, Jonathan, Oliver, and Isaac.  At the end of this week there will be a much bigger turnover as quite a few of us will be heading home. Today we concentrated on pulling in the wires from the Solar Arrays to the Inverters.  By end of day tomorrow we hope to have the sun producing power for the hospital.  As we worked through some issues we made some changes to the incoming power from Burundi, but it did not take away the problem we thought we were having.  Later in the day we began to m...

Today we made a short visit to Sister Connection.  One of the solar panels had blown off the top of the PowerPac during a violent wind storm and Seth had reinstalled it temporarily.  We went there to make a permanent fix to the situation.  Miguel is putting new fasteners onto the solar panel to make sure it never comes loose again The generator at Sister Connection has only run about 60 hours in three years.  It looks brand new! Pictures don't do justice to the different elevations, but this one is taken from Sister Connection looking into the nearby valleys.  This is truly built on top of this mountain. Back at Kibuye  Remember that Pizza Oven under construction from a few days ago?  What do you think about this now? This is one of the stone workers working on the new building that will be a community center for the missionary families on base here. Along our walk to the PowerPac we pass this small cemetery.  Upon closer...

A lot happened today as we set up and pulled in the feeders to the two new hospital panels. We had lots of help and had a lot of fun learning the words they use to describe what we were doing. Jim and Dale and Andy worked on some new incubators for the NICU ward. And all the while the Solar Panel installers continued to work until all of the panels were finally on the ground mount structure.  Next week these will all be hooked up and we will be able to power the PowerPac from the sun. Aerial view of the finished Solar Array field with the PowerPac just above. As we finished pulling in the feeders to the hospital, we chose to stay and hook up the Oxygen Compressor to the new power supply from the PowerPac.  Yesterday we had hooked up a water pump that is located just north of the Solar Array, and today's hookup came from the new main Panels in the hospital.  This is a major milestone and this critical equipment will now be powered by th...

Today we turned the generator on and tested it.  We worked on the issues we had with the PowerPac communication, and were able to test the system a number of times under differing Power-Source issues.  It does seem that the parameters programmed into the system may have to be adjusted to accept the incoming power grid, as it faulted out a number of times from possible "dirty power". We had more conduit trenches closed up and other trenches are being dug for more conduits.  We installed more solar modules and began to pull in some of the DC wires from the modules to the inverters on the back side of the PowerPac. We were not successful in getting the Internet into the PowerPac today as we struggled with many other issues, but we hope to do that tomorrow.  The ventilation equipment in the PowerPac was completed and tested today, and we feel it will be very adequate for this climate. The Burundian stone and brick masons are very skilled workers. ...

Today we continued working on the Solar Arrays.  At this point we have two complete, with a third started. The ditch to the Maintenance and Busoma buildings is making great progress.  The trench across the road by the PowerPac is now covered over and the vault at the opposite side of the road is being built.  Tomorrow we will pull the communication cable in from the hospital so that we can view and modify the PowerPac from home.  We also hope to begin pulling in some feeder conductors to the hospital utility room. Paul cut holes in the floor of the PowerPac for ventilation louvers. Conduits disappearing under concrete across the road. Wayne using I-TEC's Ground Tester to verify we have a good electrical ground for the system. Tom installing the sign for I-TEC's PowerPac #5 here at Kibuye. After lunch today we actually turned on the PowerPac, using the incoming Utility Grid to charge batteries.  We are not yet ready to let the s...

A lot of things happened as this massive team began its work today.  We got the batteries fully connected inside the PowerPac, we also fired up our small inverters that will eventually provide power for all the communication equipment.  We also began work on the Solar Inverters on the outside of the PowerPac. We began running conduits in the open trench headed for the Hospital Utility Room where our centralized panels will be located. One funny thing happened as the guys were putting conduits in the trench.  A roll of duct tape got dropped into the open sewer trench and rolled down the hill right past the PowerPac.  No one reached into the trench to retrieve it while it rolled past... If things go well tomorrow, we may turn the PowerPac on using the incoming utility power, so that we can begin testing the system.  Solar panels are being installed and by sometime next week they should be providing power from the sun to the PowerPac. ...