ProWatt & Victron Energy: Proactive Romanian poverty relief

Rustic getaway? It might look like it but in fact this is one of many homes in Romania that have no grid electricity. One company had an idea to start to make a difference to that situation. This is their story.

Earlier this year Ruurd ten Brink (Victron Energy Sales Manager covering Romania and other countries) received an email from one of his distributors. That company is ProWatt who are based in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Lucian Popescu of ProWatt takes up the story with that email to Ruurd.

Email contact

From Lucian Popescu of ProWatt:

“Romania is a country of sharp contrasts – very rich and on the other hand very poor people who barely have enough to eat from one day to another, who have no electricity, no water or toilet facilities and so on. This is a reality our country faces (and is struggling to overcome) as integration into the EU progresses.

As our company expertise is with customised solar energy solutions, we at ProWatt decided we wanted to help such families and their children, who live and learn without electricity by using candles or other primitive lighting devices.

In the Summer of 2015, we contacted World Vision Romania and explained to them what we wanted to achieve. They were very happy to help and found us a family with kids living in very poor conditions with no electricity. We prepared a project kit comprising of 2 x 150W Photovoltaic Panels, a Phoenix 350W/24V Inverter, a BlueSolar PWM charge controller and 2 x 220Ah AGM Batteries. We then arranged the installation and travelling details with World Vision which included a donation contract between ProWatt and World Vision Romania; date of installation, etc. World Vision kindly took it upon themselves to find a TV for the installation.

The moment of installation arrived! On July 29th 2015, a very sunny and warm day, our team together with a World Vision Romania representative went to Dumesti village in Vaslui county. There we found a family with 3 children living in a house made of clay, with some missing and broken windows, situated in the middle of a field with no direct access from a road. The children and parents were very curious about what we were going to do, having never seen such technical equipment in their lives.

We started to install the solar panels on the roof, being careful not to break them; we made the cable connections through the fragile clay walls with a great deal of care.

After 2 hours work we finally got to the point where the TV was switched on by one of the kids – the happiness and curiosity we saw delighted us all.

Since then we have kept in contact with World Vision and they said they have a long list of similar families which they oversee and which could be helped with similar donations.

Following the discussion we had during the Victron Energy training in December 2015, we contacted World Vision to locate some similar families as described above.

We would like these next campaigns to be organised together with Victron and depending on your answer we will be happy to arrange the next steps with World Vision Romania.

Thank you and Happy holidays!

ProWatt team

Lucian Popescu.”

Sponsorship

In response to Lucian’s email, Victron Energy were subsequently delighted to help the ProWatt team and World Vision Romania by supplying the following sponsored equipment:

16 x 12V/165Ah AGM Deep Cycle Batteries (16 on one pallet)
8 x 350 VA Phoenix inverters
8 x 150/35 BlueSolar MPPT charge controllers

Ready for the off

In the images below Lucian and the ProWatt team take to the road in 2016 with their trucks and a loaded trailer full of Victron Energy equipment; as they travel to site to install off grid electricity for 8 deserving Romanian families.