Environmental research

This project uses low-cost, modern alternative energy technology to address the problems of one of many communities in Northern Albania currently functioning without electricity for months out of the year frequently the punishing winter months, but also the only lucrative summer months thus without lights, hot water, basic communications and many of the comforts that modern life relies on assuming. Furthermore, in addition to constraining communities in what is after all part of modern Europe to a third-world standard of living, this problem propagates a vicious cycle, in which these communities are unable to better themselves autonomously, as for example through the development of sustainable small-scale tourism. This project aims to resolve these issues by constructing a low-cost, reproducible and stable example of a micro-hydro electrical system, with an output sufficient to serve the 9 houses of a small village in the Tropoja District of Northern Albania. Four of the nine households in our target community have been functioning as guesthouses for several years, and periodically lose business (and fracture relationships with tour operators) when power outages result in the sudden absence of lights, hot water, heat and basic amenities. In the absence of reliable electricity, communities are still relying on functional but obsolete solutions namely wood-burning stoves and cooking fires, as well as diesel-driven generators. In addition to creating an irresponsible carbon footprint, these practices result directly in deforestation of a National.

Albania