Heading out from Kibuye

We have been at Kibuye since Sunday night.  It is now Friday morning.  We will be packing up and moving on to Sister Connection in a few short hours.  What has happened here has been great.  We were able to upgrade the electrical service, which was a difficult several days of hard work, but it looks great and is working great.  We also reconfigured the PowerPac electronics and updated everything to the latest firmware.  We added some components that make it easier too look into the solar inverters.  We completely modified the scheme of controls that operate the incoming power from Regideso and also the generator., so that the system is simpler to bypass in the event of a problem.  We were finished with all of this yesterday, and then in our testing we still encountered a clash when the generator is running and incoming power returns.  The SMA system requires a 5 second delay between power sources and because we have a 2-position Automatic Transfer Switch, this feature is not available.  So we felt we might be leaving the system with no fix for this.  But a few of us brainstormed and explored some options, and we came up with a solution for this specific problem by modifying our controls slightly.  IT WORKED!  Praise the Lord!  Now we can move on knowing that we can get into our system from the USA and make modifications and tweaks as needed.  We will be monitoring this system along with the one we just finished up at Hope Africa University.  These systems are amazing, and we are hopeful that each of these clients will have years of operation that will be economical for them.  Of course, batteries are the weak link in the chain and need replaced every so many years as they lose their potency and ability to carry the system through the nights.

And, today, at Sister Connection, we will be installing some grounding and surge protection, as well as a power supply on our communications equipment.  Again, we should be able to access the system from abroad.  Please pray for our travels and that the work will go as planned.  I will hopefully post some photos later today or tomorrow.  Tomorrow we will be doing some training of the personnel at HAU, and looking into the system there to see how it has held up over this past first week of its life...