The cost of power in Kenya continues to rise in the wake of tough economic times blamed on multiple factors by the government.
A section of Kenyans have turned to alternative power sources to sustain activities in their households.
This is no different from Vincent Odera, who has transformed human waste to electrical power to light his parents’ home and other households in their village.
Here is his story as told by WoK.
Background
Odera is a first year student at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University in Bondo pursuing Information Technology (IT).
The IT student developed a renewable energy project that produces power by converting human waste to electricity to power their home.
At the moment, using a locally assembled transformer, Odera powers their homestead and six other households in Lela Village, Bondo.
In an interview with Citizen TV, he explained that he developed interest in generating power using human waster while in Form 3.
“I started when I was in Form 3, I’d hear people saying that human waste has power. I did research and discovered that human waste contain some heat. It was then when I started thinking about transforming it to electrical energy,” Odera said.
To produce power, Odera explained that he converts the heat from the human waste from 12 Voltage Direct Current (DC) to 240 Alternating Current (AC).
The final process of this stage is to convert the power to high voltages after which it can be supplied to households.
“This transformer can serve seven households that use light applications such as charging and lighting bulbs,” Odera said.
The power plant also has a fair share of its own challenges, for instance, Odera explained that the plant doesn’t produce sufficient power as the frequency is below the required standards.
“This power doesn’t have the required frequency. Normal power flows at 50 watts but this power flows at 30 watts
”If you also look at the waves, they’re not smooth, they’re rough and square which causes heating in electronics,” he said.
