IRIN
November 25

Villagers in the tiny community of Kostruba, 250 km northwest of Nukus, capital of the semi-autonomous Uzbek region of Karakalpakistan have something special to celebrate this Eid. For this forgotten, isolated settlement on the edge of the Qizilqum Desert has electricity for the first time, thanks to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) solar-power initiative.

"Even during Soviet times there was no power here; now at last our children can study at night and we can know what is going on in the world through radio and television," Alautin Serkebaev, a local official from this largely ethnic Kazakh region, said.

Without clean water, gas or electricity and subsisting on livestock farming, the residents of Kostruba have very little. In fact, the only resource in abundance is sunlight. "That's why we picked this place: it receives around 260 sunny days per year," Said Inogamov, a consultant with UNDP's Clean Energy for Rural Communities in Karakalpakistan project, told IRIN.

Inogamov pointed out that isolated communities like that of Kostruba had no chance of ever being connected to the electricity grid, but still needed the benefits of electricity. "Generators do the job, but the fuel is expensive and hard to come by, so solar technology has to be the answer. Once installed, the systems are virtually maintenance-free and they offer a real leap forward despite their limitations."

The system consists of a panel of photo-voltaic cells charging a battery inside the house that provides enough power to run an electric light and either a radio, small television or fan for up to eight hours.

The solar electric installations were initially met with suspicion by some villagers, who had had no experience of electricity, and this led to a temporary social imbalance. "Many of our people refused to agree to the scheme, but this was real ignorance. Now they see the benefits enjoyed by their neighbours, everybody wants the system," Serkebaev said.

The scheme has been able to assist 27 families in the village, as well as supplying a solar-powered satellite dish, decoder and television set to the local school so the community has access to television channels. During the evening, adults and children alike sit captivated by the images, and the consensus is that television is as welcome as electric lights in the homes of those lucky enough to have been wired up.

"Before, these people had to subsist with kerosene lighting. This was expensive, dirty and dangerous, and there were many fires," Gulnora Rashidova from UNDP's clean energy initiative told IRIN.

UNDP has focused on Karakalpakistan as it is one of the most underdeveloped regions of Uzbekistan, and tends to get overlooked by development agencies, the government and foreign donors.

Each domestic solar installation costs around US $2,000 for the hardware and a further $1,500 to transport and instal in this remote region. But once local people have been instructed on how the system works and how to look after it, ongoing costs are minimal. "We've done a lot of work in trying to educate people and foster a sense of ownership. For example, we've translated the [instruction] manual into Karakalpak [language]," Inogamov added.

Solar technology is also providing a solution to Kostruba's other great need: clean water. "Two solar panels now power a pump that provides 400 litres of clean water per hour," Rashidova told IRIN. The fresh water has helped reduce the toll of diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases that particularly afflict young children in rural areas with little water.

"There has been a real improvement in the overall health of so many of us here since the pump began working," Botrykhan Bozgulbaev, Kostruba's school principal, told IRIN.

The next step, according to UNDP, will be to get more homes in the region equipped with solar electricity and to find a way to drive down costs. "We need to work towards manufacturing the system in Uzbekistan; this will save money and provide essential jobs," Rano Bayhanova, a UNDP technology transfer project manager, told IRIN. "Already plans are advanced to producing solar heating panels locally, this will be a big step forward."

Meanwhile in Kostruba's school, the children shriek with delight at a Russian-made cartoon as village elders sit in an open yurt, or traditional house, drinking tea and talking as a low-wattage energy-efficient bulb burns above them, allowing them to chat happily well into the long winter night.

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