URUDI, KENYA- An interesting innovation i.e. motorbikes which are charged through sun energy has been launched by three final year students residing in a village of western Kenya’s Kisumu County lounge. These prodigal boys are named as Charles Ogingo, Robert Achoge and James Ogola.
They are in their final year at University of Nairobi. The ingenious students have built a system which they call Ecotran, which captures the sun energy, stores it in batteries, and utilizes it to charge a motorcycle’s electric motor.
Much of western Kenya has no grid electricity, and the places that do face frequent power disruptions, so solar energy is a promising alternative, they say.
The three students have set up a “fuelling” station with 40 solar photovoltaic units, each generating 250 watts of electricity. The energy is stored in batteries before being transformed by powerful inverters into the alternating current needed by the motorcycle.
The motorbike uses a small portable battery which, fully charged, can run for 70 kilometers (40 miles), after which it must return to the station to be recharged while another charged battery is fitted to the bike.
The students, who have set up a company called Pfoofy Solar Ltd, put together their system in 2014 at a climate change innovation center at Strathmore Business School in Nairobi, where they had been sent to give practical form to their ideas.
After successfully trying out the Ecotran technology on three locally bought motorcycles in Kisumu County’s Nyakach area early this year, the young innovators are now expanding the project, and powering 40 more bikes.
“We were awarded $100,000 by the United States African Development Fund and Power Africa for the ingenious innovation. It is this money that we are now using to upscale the solar project,” said Pfoofy Solar manager Achoge.
The new motorcycles are imported from China, he said.
The students will lease the bikes to 40 riders who they have trained in road safety. Most motorcyclists in Kenya, like Omondi, have no bikes of their own but ride leased machines.
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