village_industrial_power

Learn About Our Work with Tea Estates

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 21:41:49 GMT

Our Work with Tea Estates

Improving Fuel Efficiency and

Providing Workers with Electricity & Hot Water

Tea estates in Kenya are like independent states, having their own schools, health care, and social clubs, their own villages, factories and workshops. In the past, tea estates had upwards of 5000 employees, mostly tea pickers and wood cutters, but also factory workers, truck and tractor drivers, mechanics, and multi level managers. Many have since reduced their workforce to about 1500 people through mechanized harvesting. This enables them to improve the housing conditions for their remaining employees at a time of unprecedented demand for social equity.

Most farms have not yet electrified their housing clusters due to the clusters being in remote locations within walking distance of the fields. They are also not eager to increase fixed costs through grid extension, and solar is not practical due to mainly night-time use.

Housing on Kenyan tea estates is in very small rooms, typically three rooms per family, with four families in a single house. This arrangement, and the compact and geometric spacing of the houses, makes providing electricity quite easy and economical. Electric light is bright, spares cash spent on kerosene, and allows children of tea workers to study after dark. Cold water showers and laundry are done in communal bath houses, one bath house per 40 families, with separate sections for men and for women.

The VIP 10-40 Combined Heat and Power Plan t supplies low-wattage lighting to 135 tea workers (35 Watts per worker), and hot water (35 to 45ºC) to 48 shower heads. The bath houses are connected with a loop of 1” diameter buried plastic pipe, both ends of which are connected to an elevated insulated hot water tank of 1200 liter capacity. At the tea estates the VIP 10-40 is run nine hours per day, from 4 am to 7 am and 4 pm to 10 pm, so as to ensure availability of hot showers and light while the workers are awake and at home.

Tea estates in Kenya cultivate eucalyptus trees to provide fuel for tea drying. The VIP 10-40 consumes 20 to 25 kilograms of wood per hour, or 250 kilograms per day, including bringing the boiler up to pressure. The wood is air-dried scrap wood from the tea factory sawmill.

Wood consumption by tea factories is typically 25 tons per day for 100 tons per day of green leaf. There is great interest in reducing wood consumption as many factories cannot process all of the tea that is available due to lack of fuel. We have tested several factory boilers with a combustion analyzer and found these to be not more than 60% efficient. As a result, Village Industrial Power has developed a simple boiler controller for optimizing furnace draft and air supply to increase efficiency, undergoing pilot testing in April 2022. Fuel savings of 10% (66% final efficiency) would make widespread use of the VIP 10-40 possible with no increase in total wood consumption.

Village Industrial Power Speaks at EEP Knowledge Week

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 13:05:55 GMT

VIP Participates in EEP Africa's Knowledge Week to Speak About Productive Use Energy Technologies in the Context of Developing Africa

Village Industrial Power's Director of Operations, Cody Plante participated in EEP Africa Knowledge Week in November 2020. He was one of four panelists for the session, 'Expanding Productive Use: Lessons from the Field'. He was able to speak about the importance of providing linkage to high value markets for dried crops in order to facilitate adoption of productive use energy technologies.

VIP Case Study Featured in Joint ARE UNIDO Publication on Decentralised Renewable Energy Innovations

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 12:56:12 GMT

VIP Case Study - Decentralised Renewable Energy Innovations to Boost Agri-Sector Productivity & Address Global Food System Challenges

Village Industrial Power's on-farm crop dehydration project in Kenya (partially funded by EEP Africa) was recently featured in this joint publication with the Alliance for Rural Electrification and United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

VIP Donates 1,000 Packages of Dried Fruit to Heritage Home

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 19:24:00 GMT

Helping Those in Need

VIP Donates 1,000 Packages of Dried Bananas to Heritage Home

On June 12th, 2020 Village Industrial Power donated one thousand packages of dried bananas to Heritage Home, located in Machakos, Kenya to help provide a healthy and delicious snack to the children currently living in the orphanage. The children loved the dried banana, although it was something entirely new to them. They liked its sweet taste and some children were perplexed and wondered if it had been laced with sugar.

On a personal level, our visits to the orphanage made us reflect on life in terms of how at times we take things for granted which others struggle to get. For these kids even getting the basics of life such as food, shelter and clothing are a challenge.

Heritage Home is a not-for-profit organization that was established out of a compassionate heart for orphans and vulnerable children within the community.

Heritage Home Vision:

To be a comprehensive, care, protection, empowerment and transformation children/youth centre.

Heritage Home Mission:

Transforming lives of orphans and vulnerable children through care, providing quality education and teaching them the words of faith.

Heritage Home provides several services to help better the lives of orphans and vulnerable children, some of these services include:

Guidance & Counseling
Shelter & Food Security
Education & Arts
Farming & Agriculture

VIP Donates 1,000 Packages of Dried Fruit to Liberty Children's Home

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:19:42 GMT

VIP Visits Liberty Children's Home

VIP Donates 1,000 Packages of Dried Bananas to Children in Need

On June 26, 2020 members of the Village Industrial Power team visited Liberty Children's Home where we donated donated 1,000 packages of our dried bananas. It was a wonderful experience to able to see the smiles on the children's faces. They loved having us there to visit as the children to not receive visitors often, and loved the dried bananas even more!

The Liberty Children's Home was created to cater for orphans destitute and vulnerable children. The Liberty Children's Home received the first 25 children in May 2005 through the support of friends. The homes core mission is to provide the OVC with necessary support, including education, food and home based care and shelter.

Quick Facts:

Number of Children: (6-18 years old)

50 Children Total

20 Girls
30 Boys

Education Spread:

University 3
High School 18
Primary 29

VIP Visits Tamani Rescue Centre

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:19:40 GMT

VIP Visits Tamani Rescue Centre

VIP Donates 1,000 Packages of Dried Bananas

On June 27, 2020 members of the Village Industrial Power team visited Tamani Rescue Centre, based at the Mukuru kwa Njenga slum.

As part of our visit to the Tamani Rescue Centre, we donated one thousand packages of dried bananas to help provide smiles and a healthy snack to the children residing there. The children were quite welcoming, hospitable and warm. They do not get guests very often so they are always happy to see new faces. They actually hoped that we could have spent more time with them and even done an in depth tour of their home(s) but unfortunately we could not do so due to the new rules set in place due to the COVID 19 pandemic.

The Tamani Rescue Centre is a non-profit organization that helps provide orphans with basic living necessities as well as putting a large focus on the importance of primary and secondary education.

Tamani Rescue Centre Mission:

To feed and care for the orphans of the world.

Our Biomass-Fueled Power Plant

nlarocque.web@gmail.com (Nicole Larocque) — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 17:20:53 GMT

Our Biomass-Fueled Power Plant

The Steam Engine That Can!

The VIP 10-40 unit is robust, reliable, and on demand, enabling farmers to process their own crops and participate directly in the value chain. VIP’s carbon neutral engine is fuel flexible, using waste such as maize cobs, coffee parchment, mango pits, and bagasse to supply thermal, electric, and mechanical power.

The VIP 10-40 is fuel flexible, clean burning, and able to run on numerous biomass feedstocks. Super-heated steam produces heat that can be used to produce either hot air or hot water on demand for a wide range of agricultural applications. The VIP 10-40 unit offers the lowest cost of electricity in its class. It’s designed to be robust and easily operated. Using only two wrenches, the engine can be disassembled and reassembled in an hour. It’s an engine of economic growth.

EEP Africa

nlarocque.web@gmail.com (Nicole Larocque) — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 18:05:07 GMT

VIP Participates in EEP Africa Initiative

Renewable Off-grid Power for Agricultural Processing

About EEP Africa

The Energy and Environment Partnership (EEP Africa) is a multi-donor fund providing early stage grant and catalytic financing to innovative clean energy projects, technologies and business models in 15 countries across Southern and East Africa.

EEP Africa helps to support countries in the region towards the realization of a climate resilient, zero-carbon future.

The immediate objective for EEP is to enhance clean energy access, development and investment across the region, with a particular focus on benefiting poor, vulnerable and underprivileged groups. EEP Africa achieves this objective through direct financing of a diversified portfolio of clean energy projects, investment facilitation and business development support, as well as knowledge exchange, policy and partnerships.

Measuring Impact

The overall goal of the EEP Africa Trust Fund is to contribute to sustainable and inclusive green growth and to the achievement of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

EEP Africa focuses in particular on five of the global goals: SDG 1: No Poverty; SDG 5: Gender Equality; SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy; SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth; and SDG 13: Climate Action.

Learn More About the SDG Goals

Maize Processing in Western Kenya

nlarocque.web@gmail.com (Nicole Larocque) — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 17:44:44 GMT

Maize Processing

Maize processing unit in Western Kenya

This year VIP launched a mobile maize processing unit in Western Kenya. The engine runs a belt driven maize sheller producing enough waste cobs to both shell and dry maize. The fans are run by electricity, and the thermal energy, in the form of hot air, dries the maize. Properly dried maize allows farmers to get a better market price and store enough maize for personal consumption during the “hunger season.” Maize is harvested in some regions of Kenya for at least eight months of the year.

Mango Drying

nlarocque.web@gmail.com (Nicole Larocque) — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 17:38:33 GMT

Mango Drying

Mango Drying in Kenya

Post-harvest losses in the mango value chain range from 30 - 60% because farmers can’t process their crop. Mango production in Kenya this year will be over one million tons. Nearly 10% will be processed into value added products like dried mango and juice. With a VIP unit, mango is dried quickly to a higher-grade uniform product with more market value.