Promotion of solar refrigeration for agricultural value-chains

Background:

The University of Hohenheim has been carrying out research on solar cooling for the last 5 years. A smart solar ice-maker has been developed and applied for milk cooling. Up to now, 18 Systems have been successfully assessed together with local partners in Tunisia, Kenya and Colombia showing its technical feasibility. Since 2017, the economic feasibility is under study in cooperation with partners of the private sector and in synergy to several on-going public initiatives.

Objectives:

The main objective of the project is to join efforts in the promotion of solar refrigeration of food in Kenya through the:

 1)    Capacity building of local manufacturing of solar cooling systems

Provision of technical support to local companies and entrepreneurs for the creation of awareness regarding local production and cost reduction of small-scale and medium-scale solar cooling systems for food value-chains. Based on the outputs of previous projects, the University of Hohenheim currently supports the use of “cooling engines” instead of refrigerators as strategy to reduce the final price of the technology while creating specialized jobs locally.

By following this strategy, high-tech components as the cooling engines and electronics, can be exported while the assembling of the insulation-box can be carried out locally. This way, entrepreneurs have the possibility to adapt the technology to the local market and offer distribution and maintenance under their own product brand.

2)    Monitoring of milk cooling systems in western Kenya

Two Solar Milk Cooling Systems were installed in a previous project in Lukomo (Kakamega County) and Kaptama (Bungoma County) in the rural area of Northwestern Kenya.
Both systems are under assessments, to analyse the payments schemes, willingness to pay and business models for the whole period of the demonstration project.