Small Pakistani Island Lights Up with Wind-Power

Kharochhan Island, a small island off the coast of Sindh has received electricity through Wind-power by charities and community contributions – making it a little success story of its own. The charity pitched up and installed five wind turbines. Now a fifth of homes — 100 out of around 500 — have been hooked up to the system. It has revolutionised villagers’ lives, which once ended at sunset. Powering homes and businesses with wind turbines — protecting the environment and improving the quality of life, Lying 150 kilometres due south of Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi, Kharochhan is an island of thatched homes where fishermen scrape by on 75 dollars a month and never dreamed of having electricity. Half an hour by boat from the mainland, development on Kharochhan has been hampered by isolation, said Nadeem Jamali, secretary general of a charity helping coastal villages use strong winds to generate electricity. Shah Kamal, who designs wind turbines, says the high winds that batter Pakistan’s 1,050-kilometre coastline are perfect for powering turbines and cutting power shortages. Before his organisation erected turbines, villagers cut down mangroves for firewood to cook meals and used kerosene to light homes, damaging the environment and producing heavy smoke causing allergies. An applied physics graduate said the energy crisis, which sees power cut for 10 hours a day when temperatures top 40 Celsius, forced him to design and mount a wind-turbine generator on the roof of his house in Karachi.