Solar panels installed on the roof of Ngolowindo Hospital, Salima, Malawi
Deployments

A maternity clinic, six homes, and twelve farmers trained

Starfish maternity clinic · Ngolowindo Hospital, Salima, Malawi · 1 clinic · 6 homes
Six panels, 3.6 kW peak, on the roof at Ngolowindo.

Energy and agriculture on one site, which is the whole argument: the array that runs the incubator is the array that makes the training worth doing, and the farming is what keeps the community that uses the clinic fed.

What is on the ground

Maternity clinics powered1
Nurses' homes lit6
Farmers trained12

What the array runs

The clinic's child incubator, three maternity beds, weighing scales, and cold storage for medicines and vaccines.

Cold storage is the one that carries furthest. A vaccine that has been warm is a vaccine that has to be thrown away, and a clinic that cannot be sure of its cold chain cannot be sure of anything it administers.

And the homes beside it

Lighting for the six homes of the nurses living on site, which improves living conditions significantly.

Staff accommodation is not a footnote at a rural clinic. It is what makes it possible for anyone to be there at night.

Deep Bed Farming, trained on a train-the-trainer model

Twelve farmers were trained in Deep Bed Farming, the climate-smart technique that breaks the compacted layer hand hoes cannot reach.

The training was delivered on a train-the-trainer model, so those twelve carry the skills into the wider community rather than holding them. Twelve people trained once is twelve holdings; twelve trainers is a district.

Deep Bed Farming
The method the training covers, and why breaking the compacted layer matters.
Read about Deep Bed Farming
At a glance
SiteStarfish maternity clinic
LocationNgolowindo Hospital, Salima, Malawi
Scale1 clinic · 6 homes
In use sinceLive
ChargingSolar
Attachments in use
The machine on this site
Aftrak AFT-e1. 8 kW, a 5.2 kWh hot-swap battery, a PTO and an ePTO.
View the AFT-e1