Scenario
In a remote village of Afghanistan, the community relies on a basic solar system for their electricity needs. This system powers essential services—lighting for homes, a community center for education, and a small clinic. However, the system is aging, operates inefficiently, and often fails to meet the community’s needs, especially during peak hours or cloudy days.
Constraints:
- The community has very limited disposable income, making traditional upgrades financially unfeasible.
- Access to advanced technology or materials is restricted due to the village’s remote location.
- The solution must be sustainable and maintainable by the local community, who have basic technical skills.
Challenge:
Contestants are tasked with devising innovative, low-cost solutions to improve the existing solar system’s efficiency and reliability, ensuring it can meet the community’s needs. The goal is to maximize the use of available resources, incorporate renewable materials or repurposed items, and potentially introduce simple yet effective technologies that are easy to maintain.
Specific Objectives:
- Increase Energy Efficiency: Propose methods to enhance the solar system’s energy collection, storage, and distribution efficiency. Consider creative uses of local materials or low-cost innovations to optimize the existing setup.
- Improve Reliability: Develop strategies to ensure a consistent power supply, reducing outages and accommodating peak usage periods. Solutions may involve community-based management practices or simple technological enhancements.
- Enhance Sustainability: Suggest approaches to make the solar system more sustainable in the long term, including easy maintenance protocols that local residents can perform and ways to upgrade the system using locally sourced materials.
- Community Engagement: Outline a plan to involve the community in the implementation and ongoing maintenance of the solar system, including education and training components.
Evaluation Criteria:
- Innovation and Creativity: Originality of the proposed solutions and effective use of local resources.
- Feasibility and Practicality: The ease of implementing and maintaining the improvements with limited resources.
- Impact: The potential to significantly enhance the solar system’s performance and reliability.
- Sustainability: The long-term viability of the solution, including environmental, economic, and social considerations.
- Community Involvement: The effectiveness of the strategy to engage and empower the local community.
Contestants will present their solutions and we will then review it. The winning proposal will be recognized for its potential to make a tangible difference in the lives of people. The winners will be announced at the end of the month and prizes will be sent through crypto currency(USDT). We will provide directions on how to create your own wallet for receiving your prize and to get more information on the actual prizes click on the link here.
To celebrate and support the ingenuity of Afghan participants, the challenge offers enticing rewards. You will receive your winnings through cryptocurrency, more details on this will be available when the challenge is posted.
- First Place: 1500 Afghanis
- Second Place: 1000 Afghanis
- Third Place: 500 Afghanis