Originally published in RE MAGAZINE in November 2017 (cover story)
Two men a world apart feel the benefits of electric co-ops' work outside the U.S.
By Michael Kahn and Zuraidah Hoffman
BOBBY VON BOKERN
Owen Electric Cooperative, NRECA International Volunteer
Von Bokern and the Owen Electric crew with local Haitian linemen in Coteaux, Haiti (photo courtesy Owen Electric)
The email went to all staff, but Bobby VonBokern knew it was calling to him. Managers at Owen Electric Cooperative were seeking volunteers to go to Haiti to help with an NRECA International project.
“I wanted on that plane,” says VonBokern, 29, who started at the Owenton, Kentucky, co-op the day after high school graduation 11 years ago and worked his way up to lineman. “I saw an opportunity to put my skills to work for a good cause.”
In January 2015, VonBokern boarded that plane and spent three weeks in Haiti. A year later he did it again. They were experiences he will remember “until the day I die,” he says. He wasn’t expecting Beverly Hills, but what VonBokern found in Côteaux, Haiti, was still a bit jarring. And that was more than a year before Hurricane Matthew hit there.
“The houses there were pretty unimaginable. They were either made from sticks and packed mud with a tarp-covered rusted metal roof, or they were made of very brittle handmade concrete blocks with old metal or wooden roofs. One in particular had a McDonald’s tarp. I have no idea how that made it there,” he says.
If the residents walked around depressed all day, you wouldn’t blame them. But it was just the opposite.
“We were greeted by the friendliest of people and had a crowd around wherever we went,” VonBokern says of his time in Côteaux, a southwestern community where the Owen Electric team worked on an electrification project that was half solar and half diesel.
“We basically set poles for forever, it seemed. One right after another.”
VonBokern says this not as a complaint, but to paint an accurate picture of what the work was like in Côteaux. Six days a week they toiled 10 to 12 hours a day.
“The people there had no idea what to expect or how long it was going to take for them to get power, but I knew we were paving the way to a lot of smiling faces in the future.”
BENON BENA
Uganda Rural Electrification Agency, Off-Grid Renewable Energy Development Manager
Bena (second from right) and the NRECA International team in Uganda (photo by NRECA International)
“Without electricity, you cannot be productive.”
Benon Bena has made it his life’s work to bring electricity to the rural parts of his country, Uganda.
“Electricity is an enabler of development and improves the quality of life,” he says.
Now the off-grid renewable energy development manager in Uganda’s Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Bena says “the passion” started back in 2000. At the time, he was a young energy officer in Uganda’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development. He’d been tasked with turning around a failing solar project intended to provide power to a rural town. When he was finished, power was flowing and the ministry adopted every aspect of the revamped project—equipment and installation standards, grid connection, financing, training, and consumer education—as the model for all future solar-based electrification work.
“I saw the difference I could make,” he says.
Reaching Rural Uganda
Bena says the slow and intermittent progress was frustrating, but his outlook began to change in 2010, when, as part of a World Bank initiative, NRECA International started work on rural electrification strategies and master plans for all 13 electric service territories in Uganda. Now funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the NRECA team has completed six plans and will finish the remaining seven by early 2018.
“With the master planning, NRECA has enabled us to move on to the next step,” he says. “When it is complete, we can map out the whole country and see where we can improve access.”
NRECA International leaders are optimistic as well.
“The Ugandan government has made a bona fide commitment to rural electrification,” says Dan Waddle, senior vice president for NRECA International. “And having a passionate advocate like Benon at the Uganda REA is an invaluable resource as we build our electrification plans. It’s people like him that ultimately make the difference in a massive project like this.”
Bena says the electrification plans and his government’s commitment are already having an impact on development.
“You’re able to see the growth of the trade centers when people know electricity is coming,” he says. “The land prices go up. The building boom starts. … The opportunity for economic development appears.”