Solar Pumping – Rural Water Supply Network

What have rural water professionals been reading so far this year?

2023 is racing by all too quickly! But as we enter the second half of the year, let’s look at how rural water professionals are using our the network:

membership of our RWSN LinkedIn group is going wild: 16,795 people! This is up from 12,748 in January (by comparison it took the group 8 years, from 2012 to 2020, to get to over 5,000 members)
Although our Twitter following grew from 4,174 to 4,455 so far this year, engagement is down. Is Twitter dead? For serious exchange, perhaps yes.

Nearly 10,000 documents were downloaded from the RWSN online library so far this year, and here is the current top ten:

Just outside the top ten we have:

So what can learn from this?

Well, we try and curate a variety of resources that we think are likely to the most useful for rural water operators, regulators, researchers and policy-makers, but it is clear that from our online library of more than a 1,000 reports, books and presentations, what you want from us is practical guidance.

It’s interesting that some the resources above are more than a decade old, but that shows that good advice is timeless. We don’t just hold work from RWSN, but from wherever we can find it, but it is notable that the work of RWSN legends Peter Morgan, Kerstin Danert, Dotun Adekile, Richard Carter, Sally Sutton, John Butterworth, Moustaphe Diene, and Jon Naugle are so prominent in what users download. And thank you to all our authors, reviewers, presenters and members who generate and share such valuable content.

This year we are preparing our RWSN strategy to 2030, the end of the SDGs. So, what practical guidelines or standards are missing from your work that we could work with partners to create?

Resilience of Water Supply in Practice: Experiences from the Frontline

Guest blog by Leslie Morris-Iverson and St. John Day

The protracted Covid-19 pandemic has restricted international travel, cancelled or shifted international conferences on-line and confined many of us to working from home. These changes, along with an awareness of growing and intersecting threats to water supply means it is increasingly important to hear the voices and learn from the experiences of practitioners who continue to work on the frontline. We have edited a book “Resilience of Water Supply in Practice: Experiences from the Frontline” (published at the end of 2021) to help us listen to those voices, people working for utilities, contractors, catchment organizations, or non-governmental authorities, on how they are implementing to address these increasingly complex resilience challenges.

Many service providers are striving to improve the resilience of their water supply services in some very challenging environments. This refers to improving or maintaining service levels, so they can resist, recover from and withstand multiple growing pressures and shocks, such as increased water demands, aged and crumbling infrastructure, environmental pressures (including climate change) and natural or human-made disasters.

In the book, we highlight there needs to be renewed focus on strengthening resilience to raise service levels and improve professional standards of service. If service levels decline or systems breakdown there will be little prospect of getting at least basic services to people, let alone the more ambitious target of safe, adequate and affordable water supply services for all.

To improve resilience, service providers need to imagine what a resilient water supply service will look like. They should conceptualise the key factors that underpin resilience and introduce approaches that will strengthen each component. They also need to ensure inter-linkages between these component parts. This requires detailed analysis of water resources, high quality infrastructure – fit for the local context, strong management arrangements and an adaptive or iterative approach so that learning, adjustments and improvements are continuous. This means decision-makers and service providers should be concerned with wider systems strengthening work, but at the same time they must also identify immediate actions and areas where they can achieve maximum impact. This is often referred to as ‘doing the right thing and doing it right’.

In the book we present several case studies from different contexts. It consists of eight different examples, contributed by different authors, all of whom are highly experienced in water supply service provision. Each case study brings a different context, challenge, experiences and some practical findings and conclusions. Examples range from: managing water demand in the United Kingdom, to the Cape Town water crisis, to rebuilding water supply services in Freetown; from the challenges of rural water supply in Eastern Sudan, Tajikistan and Iraq, to improving service levels in post emergency situations.

This network is devoted to the important issue of rural water supply. Over the past decade or so, there have been numerous studies highlighting underperformance and shortcomings in community-based maintenance approaches. In this book many of the challenges faced by utilities are highlighted, and, in our opinion, much work is required to improve service levels and increase customer satisfaction. One of the main challenges, as demonstrated in the Sierra Leone case study, is how to strengthen resilience in a systematic manner, when development projects are short term, projects are pre-conceived and often fail to address the most critical problems the utility is facing.

One of the main conclusions from the book is that resilience is being improved through an iterative and adaptive approach. Frontline operators often need to start by ‘doing what they can with what they have,’ while setting realistic and achievable targets. There must be a strong focus on ensuring interventions are relevant to the local context and implemented professionally to prevent reworking and excessive costs. In editing the book, the importance listening to service providers who really are on the frontline – has become ever apparent.

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to this book being published and for assisting in making the book open access.

Three common myths about solar-powered water pumping

By Andrew Armstrong (Water Mission), RWSN co-lead for Sustainable Groundwater Development

Solar pumping is the trendiest technology in rural water supply today. Policy-makers and practitioners are eager to better understand its benefits and limitations and the private sector is responding with a variety of product offerings. Much of this interest is motivated by the Sustainable Development Goal to increase water service levels in the most remote areas. A more compelling driver is that rural water users are willing to pay for service that is accessible near or within their homes. There is currently no more promising technology for meeting these expectations in off-grid settings than solar pumping. Despite this high interest and the fact that solar pumping technology has been around for decades, a great deal of misinformation is being propagated.

This post aims to address a few of the most common misconceptions.

Myth #1: Solar pumping is too complicated and not appropriate for remote, rural settings

The most common barrier to adoption of solar pumping is misunderstanding of its complexity and applicability. The technology is often avoided because of perceived technical and management challenges, which are in fact common to any rural water supply system. In reality, the design and installation processes associated with solar pumping are no more complicated than other motorized pumping schemes. Operation and maintenance is more straightforward than with handpumps and generator powered schemes which, as indicated in recent evaluations published by UNICEF and the Global Solar and Water Initiative, likely leads to higher functionality and reliability rates.

Solar pumps are applicable across the same head and flow profiles as grid- and generator-powered pumps, and most solar pumping equipment available today is essentially “plug and play”. External power backup for periods of low sunlight are rarely necessary if water demand is estimated and storage is sized appropriately. In addition, current off-the-shelf computer software tools simplify equipment selection and automatically consider daily and seasonal weather and solar irradiation fluctuations when estimating water outputs.

The high capital cost of solar pumping equipment often brings its large-scale applicability into question. However, the life-cycle cost benefits of solar pumping are well documented and are within and on the lower end of IRC’s WASHCost benchmark ranges for piped schemes and boreholes fitted with handpumps. There is no fuel cost associated with solar pumps, and the cost of maintaining power generation equipment is greatly reduced because solar modules have no moving parts and long functional lifespans. Furthermore, the cost of solar modules, which represent the most expensive element of a solar pumping scheme, continues to decrease at a rapid rate.

graph1 — Click here to read about the advantages of solar pumps compared to alternative technologies commonly utilized in remote, rural settings.

Myth #2: All solar powered water pumping equipment is created equal

Equipment manufacturers have taken advantage of demand and have flooded the market with solar pumping products of all varieties and price tags. Unfortunately, many are of poor quality and likely to fail in a fraction of the lifespan of higher priced, higher quality equipment. Low-quality products seldom come with warranties covering the first few years of operation during which failures are most likely to occur. Uninformed customers often fall into the trap of choosing cheaper equipment without considering that low-quality equipment fails quicker and costs more to maintain in the long-term. This results in solar pumping schemes which were expected to function for years failing and being abandoned after a few months in operation. The best way to guard against this is to stick with brands that have a proven track record for durability and reliability, even if it costs more up-front. It is also important to verify that products adhere to internationally-recognized certification and testing standards.

Another related challenge is that imitation spare parts for major brands are easier to find than authentic ones. Logos and barcodes can be forged such that it becomes difficult to detect if a part is counterfeit. This issue can be resolved by sourcing products from trusted dealers with good technical support capacity. The private sector can also have a positive influence on product quality. By providing local dealers with exclusive access to advanced training and support networks, major manufacturers can incentivize sales of quality equipment. In fact, some solar pumping suppliers such as Bluezone Malawi are choosing to base their business model solely on high-quality products.

Myth #3: Scaling-up solar powered water pumping will lead to widescale depletion of groundwater aquifers

There is concern that solar pumps, because they can operate automatically whenever the sun shines, could pose a long-term threat to groundwater resources. It is true that exploitation of groundwater paired with low or misunderstood aquifer recharge can lead to potentially irreversible depletion, and there is a deficiency of good hydrogeological data in countries where the most interest is being placed on solar pumping. However, abstraction technology is just one of many factors that influence aquifer sustainability and solar pumping should not be devalued because of potential risks which can be mitigated. It is also important to note that the risk of groundwater depletion due to over abstraction with solar pumps depends on the application. Domestic supply withdrawals, in comparison to agriculture and protracted emergency applications, are likely to have negligible impacts.

Below are some actions that can be taken to mitigate the risk of groundwater depletion:

Proper borehole development and pump sizing to safe yield – Ensures solar pumps are physically incapable of depleting aquifers. A good resource for this is the RWSN/UNICEF Guidance Note on Professional Water Well Drilling. Simple control measures such as float valves and switches can also be employed to prevent wasting.
Better groundwater monitoring alerts authorities to potential risk areas. Many countries successfully employ remote monitoring systems (see, for example, the USGS’s National Groundwater Monitoring Network. Read more here.
Water pricing in the form of tariff collections and abstraction charges enables sustainable and equitable allocation of groundwater resources, but requires sound management built on transparency and accountability. Prepaid water metering technologies may also play a role.

Further resources

Resources are available to equip rural water professionals with knowledge and skills and stop the spread of misinformation about solar pumping. Of note:

The World Bank curates a solar pumping website and knowledge base. For a good overview of solar pumping system components and other considerations, see this recent World Bank publication (Solar Pumping: The Basics).
The Grundfos Technical Institute offers a series of free pre-recorded solar pumping and related webinars.
Numerous universities, such as Strathmore University in Kenya, offer in-person courses designed specifically for working professionals.

In order to generate rich discussion and continue raising awareness of existing resources around solar pumping, the RWSN Sustainable Groundwater Development theme will host a three-week e-discussion from 28 May to 15 June 2018. For more information or to participate in the e-discussion, join the RWSN Sustainable Groundwater Development DGroup.

(Photo credits: Water Mission)

Pumping up water from the sands of Egypt: Is solar-powered pumping of groundwater for irrigation a panacea for water and food insecure areas?

Pumping up water from the sands of Egypt Is solar-powered pumping of groundwater for irrigation a panacea for water and food insecure areas? It certainly can be marketed that way: in India, the use of solar energy for this purpose is helping ease the load on overburdened electricity grids and reduce its carbon footprint. Other…

via Pumping up the policies: The critical role of policy analysis in implementing solar-powered groundwater pumping — Groundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice (GRIPP)

#RWSN @ #WWW : the presentations

RWSN co-convened two sessions at last week’s SIWI World Water Week in Stockholm and presentations are available to download:

WASHoholic Anonymous – Confessions of Failure and how to Reform

All presentations: http://programme.worldwaterweek.org/sites/default/files/panzerbeiter_lt_1400.pdf

Build and Run to Last: Advances in Rural Water Services

Continue reading “#RWSN @ #WWW : the presentations”

Visit to Water Missions – Deep South Innovators

Andrew Armstong at Water Mission headquarters — Andrew Armstrong at Water Missions headquarters

This year I was fortunate enough to attend the ‘Water & Health Conference’ at UNC, North Carolina, USA again. I was running a side event on WASHTech, and my partner in crime was Andrew Armstrong, Water Missions’ community development programs manager who gave a great presentation on the experiences of Water Missions in introducing solar water pumping and water pre-payment systems in Uganda.

On Monday 21^st October, after the conference, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, standing in large a naval dockyard surrounded by towering steel cranes and fat oil depot tanks. On one side of the sparse car park was a sizeable array of solar panels and opposite was long, low warehouse on which the name “Water Missions International” was emblazoned in precise, blue lettering.

I was shown around the Water Missions International facility by Andrew. There are 27 staff based in this location and numerous volunteers. The building acts an office, workshop, storage area and display area, the latter being open to groups to visit and find out about their work.

Water Missions was created in 1998 in the wake of Hurricane Mitch, which devastated much of Central America, particularly Honduras and Nicaragua. After running operations out of their environmental engineering firm for a few years, the founders sold their company in 2001 and set up the charity and today they work in Belize, Indonesia, Malawi, Mexico, Uganda, Haiti, Kenya, Tanzania, Peru and Honduras.

Continue reading “Visit to Water Missions – Deep South Innovators”

Assessing the potential of solar powered pumping for domestic water supply in Uganda

Update from Uganda on testing the Technology Applicability Framework (TAF) as part of the WASHtech project

WASHTech, THE project (2011-2013)

In Kanungu district of south western Uganda, the Technology Applicability Framework (TAF) work was used to assess the potential of solar powered water pumping in the country.The exercise involved representatives from the Ministry of Water and Environment, Technical Support Units (TSUs),Kanungu district local governments, local NGOs, research institutions, private sector enterprises and beneficially communities. The assessment was based on the following dimension: social acceptance of the technology in the community, environmental dimension, and affordability of the technology by community members, skills and knowhow.

Solar powered pumping for domestic supply has great potential in Uganda if the following issues are adequately addressed:

Scheme operators and beneficially communities should provide adequate security measures to protect solar panels from theft. In addition, communities using solar water powered pumps and bore holes should be able to access loans from banks or financial institutions for replacement of highly expensive scheme components in the event of…

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Sustainability of solar water pumping in Uganda

Latest news from WASHTech project in Uganda: http://www.rural-water-supply.net/en/projekts/details/56

WASHTech, THE project (2011-2013)

This video highlights steps of using the Technology Applicability Framework (TAF) to assess the potential solar powered water pumping for domestic supply in Kanungu district of south western Uganda

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