In early August 2021, NUST staff commissioned a 20-kilowatt power plant as part of the Sustainable Energies, Entrepreneurship and Development (SEED) Project Solar Living Lab. The power plant is located in !Kharoxas, about 60KM outside of Windhoek and will benefit the members of the !Khomanin San community. The NUST representatives included Prof James Katende, Professor of Renewable Energy Systems in the Faculty of Engineering, Ms Helvi Ileka, Acting Director of the Namibia Energy Institute, and postgraduate students. Representatives from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Namibia Engineering Corporation (NEC), the !Khomanin Traditional Authority, NamPol and several media outlets attended the commissioning.

Funded by the DAAD until 2024 and implemented in partnership with the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany, the Living Lab will serve as a lighthouse project for the next two decades for teaching and research related to energy transition, rural electrification, and the entrepreneurial productive use of electricity. The Living Lab’s 20-killowatt solar panel was designed and specified by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DECE) team and installed by NEC.

Learn more by visiting the NUST's original article here.