For many people living in slum-like conditions, electricity is often a luxury, and not taken for granted like it is by so many of us. When the sun goes down, it often means lights out and game over. RESET has already reported on many initiatives that try to bring light into the darkness, like the Dominican Light Project, for example, or Pollinate Energy. But sometimes you need more electricity than what’s required to power a lamp. And electricity can be expensive, some people simply can’t afford it.
In a small village on the Red River in Vietnam, not far from Hanoi, roughly ten wind turbines stand. Not only do they offer a green, inexpensive and simple solution to the local electricity problem, but also, and even more impressively, they’re handmade. Architect Le Vu Cuong constructed the turbines to help the people in the village and their energy bills have already been cut by a third. He’s now planning a further 15 turbines in order to be able to supply the rest of the inhabitants with clean and affordable electricity.
Clean Energy Lights up Vietnamese villages
In the future, developer Le Vu Cuong wants to take his project to other impoverished areas of Vietnam. The increase in hours of electricity available to them has massively improved the quality of life for local people. Currently Vietnam’s electricity comes from coal power stations and the use of renewable energies could create 500 times more electricity than is currently being produced (around 140 megawatts).
For the Vietnamese villagers it’s certainly worth knocking together a wind turbine made of plastic buckets, not only in order to save on electricity bills, but to do their bit to help save the environment too.
For more information and to see the turbines in action, check out the video below.
This article was translated from the original by Hanadi which appeared on our German-language platform.
