Sai Ngam Church and Community

On December 2010, a team went to Sai Ngam,  Thailand, to replace a faulty inverter for the solar lighting at Sai Ngam's church. The faulty inverter's cooling fan died and causes over-heating on the inverter. The new inverter does not require cooling fan to operate, hence it is expected to be more reliable.

Now both churches at Sai Ngam and Nam Plamoong uses the same inverters, i.e. without cooling fan. We will continue to monitor the reliability of these inverters so that if found reliable, we will use them at other installations.

In addition, the team also identified 5 houses at Sai Ngam village without lights at night. Their solar powered lights have broken down and they uses candle lights at night. It is a fire hazard when they use the candle lights. 

We have design a simple rechargable battery operated LED lamp which uses their existing solar panels to charge the rechargable battery during the day.

 The lamps have a red LED indicator to show that during the day, the sun is charging the battery. The lamp is connected to a switch mounted on the wall for ease of switching "ON/OFF" the lamp at night.

 The lamp is a low power LED (100mW), which is brighter than a candle light. The 5 houses are installed with these lamps. Each house is given 2 lamps which provides sufficient lighting for them to see and walk around the house at night.

Lamp Specifications:
LED 100 mW
1 AA Metal Hydride Rechargable Battery, 1.2V at 2700 mA-Hour
A single Full Charge able to operate 18 hours.