Remote Work with a Global Impact
Advancing Clean Energy Access with the Centre Polyvalent de Formation in Cameroon
Theodore A. Cohen, Trent Dillon
What can be done to advance international access to renewable energy in the midst of a global pandemic?
This is a question we grappled with in the spring and summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic rampaged, bringing airports and border crossings to an immediate, complete shutdown. Over the years, our organization has done several trips to places like Puerto Rico and Guatemala, where we’ve met with community leaders to develop clean energy power solutions that meet their needs. We learned through our surveying that these trips yielded measurable positive changes for these communities, but without the possibility of travel, we were forced to think creatively about how we could use our resources to fulfill GRID’s mission in entirely different ways.
After some thought and planning, we contacted several educators that GRID leaders Griffin Ruehl and Breena Sperry met in 2018 at a conference for the African Network for Solar Energy. This led us to Daniel Martin Ngwanou and Arnaud Nzendjang Mbakouop, who are, respectively, the campus director and head of the renewable energy department at Centre Polyvalent de Formation (CPF), a technical school in Mbouo Bandjoun Cameroon. They provide training in modern methods for renewable energy system design, health care, and agriculture. CPF does exceptional work developing education programs in Cameroon, but they do not have access to the same level of funding, resources, and infrastructure as US schools. We began by discussing the needs of their training program and decided that the best way for us to collaborate was for GRID to work with CPF to develop and implement a training course in remote data collection techniques, which is crucial for renewable energy infrastructure planning and monitoring. We began with an ostensibly simple practice problem: how do you monitor the level of a remote water tank? We chose this system because it resembles and functions similarly to a remote solar monitoring system, but is a lot easier to design and build.
Our core team, including John Gannon, Ted Cohen, Ian Murphy, Owen Johnson, and Pahn Yerbert, discussed the technical aspects of this system for a quite a while, and quickly found that our seemingly simple practice problem was anything but simple. For the system to function well, we’d need several components to operate synchronously. Our first and most straightforward component involved building a wired connection between a water level sensor and an Arduino microcontroller. However, the larger challenge was determining how to wirelessly transmit data from the sensor. We first chose a Google Firebase database, hoping we could connect to this database via a cellular network connection. After running into a number of technical roadblocks, we switched to a WiFi transmission system to send data from the sensor to our Firebase database. This allowed us to sync our database with a Python-based user interface that displayed sensor information in real time.
After designing the system ourselves, we then needed to create a remote curriculum for CPF students to follow and use to build their own remote sensors. We decided that the best approach was to create recorded video presentations describing the principles behind each component of the system, providing hands-on demonstration, and ultimately, instructing students how to use their personal demo kits and build their own remote sensor. Through coordination with Ian, the University of Washington’s Clean Energy Institute generously funded the purchase of Arduino kits for each student, and, after working with several international money transfer options, Ted was able to confirm the students had everything they needed to follow our curriculum. Through preliminary surveying, we discovered that many of the students at CPF did not speak English, so Pahn and John published our videos on YouTube with Google-generated French subtitles. Through exit surveys, we learned that this worked well enough for the students to follow along with the content and demonstrations!
Although the kickoff of the course was mostly smooth, there were a number of challenges along the way — including software compatibility issues, limited internet, and periodic blackouts — that slowed things down. We mitigated these by holding Zoom office hours throughout the course to provide support to Arnaud. He, his staff, and the students worked tirelessly, spending many hours outside of office hours, to troubleshoot demos and make this course a success. This course would not have been possible without their patience and effort. While the internet limitations and blackouts hampered some of our final database and Python demonstrations, the students nevertheless managed to successfully implement a number of demos from the course, and we’re excited that the course videos will always be available for any of the students to reference in the future.
A core value of GRID is to understand the socioeconomic impacts of technology integration. To this end, Breena Sperry, Florence Dou, and Elin Nybonn from GRID’s social impact team developed pre- and post-course surveys for the students. These surveys revealed that, despite the challenges and setbacks, almost all of the students found the course content accessible and intellectually stimulating! Many of the students said that their abilities with Arduino coding, sensor use, and wireless data transmission improved or greatly improved as a result of the course. Students identified that the lack of consistent internet access made the WiFi transmission and database components particularly challenging. Despite these hurdles, the students were energized by the course as a whole, with one student even planning to use the course content to build a mini solar phone charging station!
Fortunately, the story didn’t end there. We recently reached out to the folks at CPF, and were excited to learn that they continued to make improvements to our water level sensor design. They now have an Arduino-based sensor system that monitors the water level of a large tank near the school! They made several advancements to the design, including incorporating a larger water sensor and utilizing long range radio transmission as opposed to WiFi. We’re thrilled to see this system working and growing. It demonstrates that, with modern tools and a bit of creativity, important knowledge can be co-developed with schools and communities that do not have the same access to resources and funding as is available elsewhere. We can’t wait to keep working with CPF to refine this course, and we hope that it can serve as a productive model for co-producing new clean energy capabilities with any community around the world!
After reflecting on the process of building out this course, we’d like to emphasize a few important lessons that we’ve learned as GRID students. First, we cannot overstate how critical it was to have excellent community support for this work. Daniel and Arnaud were incredibly diligent in developing solutions for the many problems we encountered, and none of this would have worked without their efforts. Second, we learned that translating course content and adapting it to a different learning environment requires a lot of thought and planning. Our team was fortunate to be able to develop this course from locations with reliable access to electricity and internet, but these conditions aren’t as ubiquitous for CPF students. We learned that flexibility and creativity is required to make these systems work well for their communities, and innovations from partners — like the use of radio transmission in the new live water level sensor — are vital for initial design concepts to integrate well. Finally, we’re learning that for similar curriculum-focused projects to be most impactful and sustainable, reflecting and iterating on the initial course after its finished is an important opportunity to ensure it’s longevity. For instance, in light of internet limitations, some GRID members are investigating options for databases that don’t require an internet connection. We’ll need to revise the course to add this component, but these improvements will ensure that our work continues to positively impact the communities we collaborate with.
We’d like to thank the Clean Energy Institute for their support of this project, which enabled the progress and learning of our student organization and capabilities at CPF. Once again, none of this would have been possible without Arnaud, Daniel and the hard work of CPF staff and students. We’re incredibly grateful for their efforts and proud of the relationship GRID is developing with such enthusiastic and innovative educators and students in Cameroon.
