Reliable Power

On Friday, I visited the AMPATH clinic at Busia, near the border of Uganda and about 3 hours away by car. The trip was a bit bumpy on the way out, my Kenyan colleague noted that driving in Kenya was more of a sport. I thought it a pretty apt description, to drive here is to be constantly on the lookout for any type of road hazard.

The reason for the trip was to assess some power issues the site has been experiencing. By power problems, we are talking power outages, surges and brown outs. This is causing all manner of troubles with our server and PC equipment at the site. The worst part, each time something major happens, it usually involves having to dispatch on our team to repair and restore the hardware. This can take from 1-2 days given the severity of the problems. So, though we are not electrical guys, we have a vested interest in solving the issues in short order. At the very least, we need to protect our assets and our time.

In the course of the morning we learned quite a bit. The problems are numerous and they need to be addressed.* The mains between buildings seemed to be inadequate for the tasks, there wasn't proper grounding in most buildings, shorts seemed to be happening everywhere.  In addition, the power being supplied by the local power company seemed to have issues as well. The sad part is that folks here have somehow accepted this as normal and there has been little action on repairing the problems.**

* Again I'm no electrician, but no way some of the electrical work should have passed code (in any country).

** Their solution has been to run the generator almost all the time. The generators are in place mainly as a backup, and in that capacity they do a great job. However, it appears that at the Busia site, the generators are seen as being more than a backup solution, almost another primary source of power.

We were able to meet with a few administrators, shared our concerns and agreed to work together to address the concerns. It will be interesting to see how things will work out in the coming weeks. We did agree to return to Busia in a couple of weeks to follow up. I'm optimistic generally and I hope this all works out. In any event, I'll keep everyone posted, like to keep you all riveted!