Grameen Shakti

Light provided by the solar panel! 

Woman cooking on her new stove!

Grameen Shakti (Energy) is sister company of Grameen Bank that is providing environmentally friendly energy to the rural villages. Today I had the opportunity to visit individual homes that contain three of Shakti’s initiatives. The first project I visited was a home equipped with a solar panel. The panel collected energy during the day and was able to store enough energy for four hours of use at night. The battery stored enough energy to light a light bulb, small fan, and charge a cell phone. The entire system and installation cost the borrowers 26,000 taka ($371) which could be borrowed from the Grameen Bank and paid back in 400 taka installments of three years. The second project was a special kind of stove with a long exhaust venting system that carried the smoke produced by cooking with fire from the house. The third project was a system for producing, storing, and using methane gas to cook. Cow dung was deposited every other day into a concrete reservoir underground and methane gas was produced. The methane was then released into a tube system that ran out of the ground, across the courtyard and into the stove. The system provided enough gas for cooking for an entire family and could provide as much as needed if the tank was continuously filled. Luckily, there is never a shortage of cow dung! The entire system cost 20,000 taka ($286) and the money could be borrowed from Grameen Bank and paid back over several years.