Performance of the 1KW Photovoltaic System at Aoral, Cambodia

I have collected 3 days of voltage samples across the battery bank. It can be seen clearly that during the day, the battery voltage rises due to the sun shining onto the solar panels, thus charging the batteries.

At night, we use the ceiling fans and security lights at the compound. You can see the battery voltage is dropping due to the battery discharging its energy.
The first night we over used the ceiling fans, we turn on all 4 fans. It cause the battery to discharge to much, shutting down the security lighting in the middle of the night because the charge controller senses a low battery voltage. One fan was switched off at about 3am and the battery voltage recovered a bit.
The next 2 days, we were able to manage our electricity better and there was no shutdown of the system. We uses only 3 ceiling fans for the night.

LED Lanterns for Aoral

We have design a low cost LED lantern that can offer lights to the poor at night for their dinner or for the childrent to study. The lantern is charged by solar. A day's charge can provide continous light for 25 hours, which is approximately 5 nights of usage. This means that they only need to charge their lantern once every 5 days.

Installation at a village chief house, the solar panel and charger.

We donated 24 lanterns to the villages.

Next, we install the solar lantern at a school dormitory at Aoral. They do not have lights at night.

The charger is placed at the principal's bedroom and the lanterns are all connected to the charger.

At night, the students are using the lantern to study. Before that, they were using candles.

Security Lights at Kg Speu

On 5 October 2009, we went to Kampung Speu, Cambodia, to install 6 security lamps at a training centre. They have built-in Ni-Cd batteries to provide back-up power when there is black out at night. It has a light sensor and the lamp will automatically turn on when it is dark.

Short Visit to Cambodia

I did a short visit to Aoral, West of Cambodia to repair the inverter on 8 May 2009.

Finally it is replace with a new inverter. The previous inverter broke down due to excessive electrical overload which causes the casing of fuse to melt and make the inverter non operational. Interestingly, the fuse did not blow.

Next, on 9 May, I went to Hope Village at Prey Veng (East of Cambodia) to replace the old lead acid batteries with new deep cycle lead acid batteries. The batteries were getting old and not getting full charge for the solar. The security lights shut down at about 2am in the morning because of the weak batteries.

I returned home on 11 May 2009.

Visit Laos, Vientiane

I visited Vientiane, Laos, on 2 April 2009. Stayed there for 10 days. While we were there, we taught the Lao students Webpage Design and English. It is a nice, quite and clean city.

Above is a group picture taken at the Victory Monument, Patouxay, at Vientiane.

The 2 pictures shows us conducting English lessons and guiding the students on web design project.

We were there during their New Year and everyone were celebrating the water festival willingly!

While in Vientiane, we met old friends who stay at Vientiane, Laos.

Visit Iban Church in Kuching, Sarawak

On December 2008, I was invited to witness the completion of a renovation church building in Kuching , Sarawak, East Malaysia. The church belongs to the local people, the Ibans. The renovation work is provided by a group of volunteers who are doing good works during their weekends to help churches.

The congregations are seated for rhe church service and also thanking the volunteers for their good works.

I came across an interesting bridge crossing for a stream. It looks strong enough to hold my weight!

Light of Aoral 2, 1KW Photovoltaic System

We have installed a 1KW Photovoltaic System at the Medical Outpost at Aoral, Cambodia, on 13 October 2008. The medical facilities is managed by an NGO, Project Khmer Hope. The system will complement the existing diesel generator. Most of the time, the diesel generator is not used and the solar takes over. Only at times when alot of power is needed, the system will do a manual switch over to the generator.

The system is a single phase inverter while the generator is operating 3 phase. Hence we place a switch on the red phase of the generator output which can be manually switch between solar and generator. At the distribution box, only essential appliances such as fans, lights and TV are connected.

The inverter (COTEK, pure sinewave) can produce 230Vac 600W, hence the number of electrical applicance connected to the red phase should be limited below 600W.



The intelligent charge controller is from Phocos which can handle 1 KW power from the 8 solar panels. (125 W each)

A total of 10 deep cycle batteries 100Ah are connected to the system, operating at 24Vdc.

It took 2 days to mount the structures to hold the 8 solar panels on top of the water tank. First, mounting of the metal structure, including arc welding them, paint undercoat on the structure, mount the solar panels and finally wiring for 24 Vdc operation.


The system is able to charge the batteries when the sun is shining and during the night, when the 4 fans and 17 security lamps are switched ON, you can see the battery voltage dropping until the next morning with the batteries are charge by solar again.



The team that install the system is below.