62-year-old Egyptian retiree, Mohamed Zaki Makhlouf, has accepted Shamsina’s offer to install a solar water heater built in the area on his roof in the province of Fayyoum.
The leader of an eleven-person family in a hamlet can get direct access to hot water for the first time.
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Why Mahlouf accepted the offer
According to Makhlouf, “When the company’s representative contacted me, I didn’t hesitate. I permitted them to come and set up the heater. Both to myself and to others, performing such a thing is harmless. Why not do it then? On the contrary, it may be advantageous to both myself and others.”
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Makhlouf, his wife, two sons, their wives, and five grandkids reside in a two-story home makes EGP 5500 each month, or around $178. The family utilises gas tanks to heat their water on a kitchen stove, much like millions of Egyptians do.
Makhlouf’s home has met all requirements established by Shamsina, which is Arabic for “Our Sun,” to be eligible for a free solar water heater.
“At Shamsina, our mission is to tangibly improve the well-being of households that we target,” explains Sara Mousa, co-founder and CEO.
“We do that by decreasing the amount of time it takes them to heat water, decreasing the ongoing cost of doing so, and by giving them an alternative that is healthier, safer, and more environmentally friendly.”
Mousa is an American-born Egyptian who was reared in the country. She used to go to Egypt every summer with her family when she was a child.
After completing her undergraduate studies in the US in 2010, Mousa relocated to Cairo and started helping in underprivileged areas.
She observed that the majority of low-income households heat their water manually. She had the inspiration for her company at that precise time.
“When we initially got aware of this issue, we were quite interested to see how prevalent it is, so we dug up national statistics. And we discovered that, according to estimates, over half of Egyptian homes heat their water manually, adds Mousa, a Princeton University graduate with a BA in public administration.
She argues that these manual techniques have an impact on the air quality in underprivileged homes and raise the danger of burns.
“If we take a single home and they stop using two petrol tanks to heat their water each month, we save emissions by five kilogrammes each month. This may seem quite modest for a single family, but if we compound it month after month over millions of families, we can really see a reduction in CO2 emissions, the expert claims.
Typically, Sabah Nabil, Makhlouf’s daughter-in-law, is responsible for boiling water for the household. In the winter, the process becomes quite inconvenient.
“Three or four times a day in the cold, I heat water. Because of her foot problems, my mother-in-law requires hot water whenever she bathes before prayers. She need hot water five times a day as a result. Every other day, I heat water to bathe my kids, adds Nabil, the mother of Mohamed and Waed.
Makhlouf’s family spends up to 10% of their monthly income on butane cylinders during the colder months.
Each [nuclear] household uses around one or one and a half petrol cylinders throughout the winter. In all, we use around four tanks every month. According to Makhlouf, this can cost anywhere from EGP 350 to EGP 500 ($11 to $16).
Utilising petrol cylinders that are significantly subsidised puts further burden on the budget of the cash-strapped nation, which continues to be a net importer of oil and its derivatives.
Statistics of butane cylinder use in Egypt
According to the World Bank, three out of every four Egyptian families relied on butane cylinders in 2013 due to a lack of affordable, grid-connected natural gas supplies.
Around 800 000 butane cylinders are consumed daily by Egyptians, 50% of which are imported, according to oil minister Tarek El-Molla’s estimate from the previous year. He further stated that the government subsidised butane cylinders to the tune of almost EGP 35 billion ($1.32 billion) yearly.
Given the volatility of the price of oil globally and Egypt’s ongoing foreign currency problems, the cost of importing and subsidising petrol tanks is often doomed to increase.
Solar energy has the potential to help ease the burden on the state’s finances, much like other renewable energy sources.
According to the country’s 1991 Atlas, the North African nation, which will host the UN conference on climate change in 2022, is situated in the centre of the world’s solar belt and receives at least 2900 hours of sunlight yearly.
The government of Egypt adopted measures as part of its Egypt Vision 2030 with the intention of lessening its dependency on fossil fuels and increasing its use of renewable energy sources.
Egypt intends to produce 42% of its required energy from renewable sources, such as solar, hydro, and wind, by 2030, in accordance with the long-term development policy of the government. Many startups, like Shamsina, now have commercial potential because to this idea.
“Our business model is hybrid. In order to serve low-income homes, we are really lucky to get grants and contributions. On the other side, we are quite enthusiastic about our cross-subsidy business strategy. We target more affluent customers who can afford our solar water heater, such as companies and hotels, and we utilise the money we make from them to pay for solar water heaters for our lower-income homes, adds Mousa.
About Shamsina
Shamsina, a Harvard Innovation Labs-incubated company, has so far created five variations of its thermal solar water heater.
Shamsina has piloted 30 water heaters in various low-income communities around the nation with a total seed investment of almost $ 25,000. The firm provides customers with a more cheap solar water heater that costs roughly half as much as the imported one thanks to local R&D and components.
Professor of Engineering Omar Abdelaziz of the American University of Cairo claims that even if solar water heaters were widely available and inexpensive, they were unlikely to completely replace traditional heaters, especially in Egypt’s heavily populated cities.
Predicting that their market share would be “no more than 30%,” he argues that the installation of solar collectors necessitates wide expanses that are more common in isolated or rural locations with lower population concentrations.
However, he does see in them a crucial component of the larger plan of energy production and “empowerment”.
He adds that “with a solar water heater, we will be able to provide access to hot water in places that never had this privilege; and that is very important.” “They can guarantee some form of empowerment,” he says.
And every reduction matters if Egypt is to meet its goal of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector by 10% from 2016 levels by 2030.