From heaven and from earth - not a title of a fairy tale but an award-winning new electricity concept of a German company (specialized in solar energy) combining both: the energy from heaven and from the earth. Pioneering a new solar hybrid power system, the Cologne-based provider Energiebau Solarstromsysteme GmbH just received in January 2007 the Roy Family Award 2007 from Harvard University - for their successful public-private partnership in the field of environmental protection.

The awarded solar hybrid system is a combination of a photovoltaic system and generators developed by Energiebau to be run on pure vegetable oil as well as inverters and batteries.
Tested in several projects in Africa and Asia, the newest project in Tanzania provides clean electricity day and night to 140 people. The whole system will be paid off after 10 – 15 years, energetic amortisation will be achieved even faster within 2 – 5 years.
But the concept goes further in its social implications:
first it provides whole communities with the basis to generate additional income from harvesting the plants needed to produce the generator oil.
Second, decentrally generated electricity in rural areas also facilitates access to clean water, to health care services, education and economic development.
Third, the alternative use of oil instead of common fuel provides independency from high costs for diesel – and on top doesn’t pollute the environment. The jatropha plant used for the oil also has the advantage that it even grows in very dry regions in barren soil.

Since sun and barren landscape aren't scarce resources in Africa, the concept seems well thought trough.
Experts even think that it could become a model for the whole of Africa – getting one step closer to heaven on earth!
Foto: Website