ProfiNRG dreams of 24-7 water on Bear Sheba, will you help?

ProfiNRG's 10th anniversary coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Beer Sheba project in Senegal. Reason for us to put this project in the spotlight. Partly for this reason, our marketing & communication colleagues went to Senegal to visit the projects where our used/remaining solar panels and inverters go, among other things.

On Bear Sheba are Anco van Bergeijk and Ewien van Bergeijk Started 10 years ago with a few panels and a well. This has since grown into a 100-hectare project with a farm (chickens, pigs, goats and cows) training centre for young Senegalese farmers, school, clinic, church, shop and kitchen garden. This provides employment for many people, including some with disabilities.

'We visited the Bear Sheba Project there, says Jolien van Hattem. It is great to see all that has been achieved there in the past 10 years through solar energy. With the energy generated, 300 m3 of groundwater is pumped up from about 70 metres deep every day, which can be used on the land, for animal care and for the community in their daily lives. There is also a tapping point for the residents of the surrounding villages; we saw donkey carts full of jerry cans driving to and fro here.'

'With sufficient water pressure and electricity, they can irrigate about 500 m2 at a time with an already existing sprinkler system, said Corina Nsengimana. The machine rotates slowly, spraying this huge area in a few hours. Unfortunately, it cannot be used so far because the power supply is insufficient for both the water pump (due to the required water pressure) and the spraying system itself.'

Bert van Woudenberg: 'Currently, there is just enough solar energy to run the general water pump from 7am to 7pm. It seems nice for ProfiNRG to donate 500 kWh of batteries for this purpose (+/- €25,000) then enough energy can be stored for the general power supply and to run the sprinkler system at night, which is of course much more productive than during the day in the burning sun. This is obviously not a new battery, but consists of recycled lithium batteries from the automotive industry, a speciality of Anco.'