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 Surrounded by motorbikes running on polluting fossil fuels, Omondi
sits astride his solar-powered rechargeable motorcycle, which uses
technology developed by students from the University of Nairobi.
Charles Ogingo, Robert Achoge and James Ogola – all final year
students – have built a system they call Ecotran, which captures the
sun’s energy, stores it in batteries, and uses it to charge a
motorcycle’s electric motor.
Much of western Kenya has no grid electricity, and the places that
do face frequent power disruptions, so solar energy is a promising
alternative, they say.
The three students have set up a "fuelling" station with 40 solar
photovoltaic units, each generating 250 watts of electricity. The
energy is stored in batteries before being transformed by powerful
inverters into the alternating current needed by the motorcycle.
 The motorbike uses a small portable battery which, fully charged,
can run for 70 kilometers (40 miles), after which it must return to
the station to be recharged while another charged battery is fitted
to the bike.
The students, who have set up a company called Pfoofy Solar Ltd, put
together their system in 2014 at a climate change innovation center
at Strathmore Business School in Nairobi, where they had been sent
to give practical form to their ideas.
After successfully trying out the Ecotran technology on three
locally bought motorcycles in Kisumu County’s Nyakach area early
this year, the young innovators are now expanding the project, and
powering 40 more bikes.
"We were awarded $100,000 by the United States African Development
Fund and Power Africa for the ingenious innovation. It is this money
that we are now using to upscale the solar project,” said Pfoofy
Solar manager Achoge.
The new motorcycles are imported from China, he said.
The students will lease the bikes to 40 riders who they have trained
in road safety. Most motorcyclists in Kenya, like Omondi, have no
bikes of their own but ride leased machines.
Omondi, who used to ride a petrol motorcycle, said he used to make
1,000 shillings ($9.60) on a good day, but would spend about 350
shillings on fuel and another 300 to lease the bike from its owner.
Now it costs him 100 shillings (96 cents) to recharge the electric
motorbike, saving him money even as he helps the environment by
curbing pollution and climate-changing emissions.
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"The only challenge is that this electric bike has low acceleration
and cannot work in hilly terrain,” he pointed out.
Ogingo, a mechanical engineering student, agreed that the technology
promises lower operating costs as well as environmental benefits.
Taxi motorbikes are a big industry in Kenya, employing thousands of
young people. The World Health Organization estimates that between
2005 and 2011, motorcycle registrations in Kenya increased almost
40-fold, and that by 2011 motorcycles made up 70 percent of all
newly registered vehicles in the country.
In the capital Nairobi the number of registered motor vehicles stood
at 2.25 million in 2013, many of them older vehicles emitting
relatively high levels of pollution.
Shem Wandiga, a researcher at the University of Nairobi, said air
pollution can damage residents’ health in highly polluted areas such
as Kisumu, Kenya’s third biggest city, and Nairobi.
Illness and deaths linked to air pollution cause economic losses of
$15 million a year, according to a 2014 study in Nairobi by the
University of Nairobi. In Kenya, 39 percent of air pollution is
caused by motor traffic, the study said.
The motor industry is the main source of air pollution in Africa,
and air pollution causes an estimated 176,000 premature deaths a
year on the continent, according to a World Health Organization
survey of 2012.
(Reporting by Leopold Obi; editing by Timothy Pearce and Laurie
Goering :; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the
charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news,
climate change, women's rights, trafficking and corruption. Visit
www.trust.org/climate)
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