Taken from IIT Today, August 18, 2011

In a whirlwind eight-day trip to Lascahobas, Haiti, following nearly a year’s worth of planning, designing, and hard work, a team of IIT students from IPRO 335: Developing Technology to Transform Education throughout Haiti successfully carried out their first solar powering deployment in early August, providing the EFACAP school in Lascahobas with the capability to charge 500 OLPC XO laptops with a direct current (DC)-only solar system. According to research by the team and OLPC, the installation is the largest single-school solar laptop-charging deployment in the world.

Led by Assistant Professor of Social Sciences Laura Hosman, IIT students Dhara Shah, Jacob Ernst, Mario Berrones, Regine Antenor, Ryan Tillman, Simon Brauer, and Stevie Brummer joined Bruce Baikie from Green Wifi, Fabrice Urrizalqui from the French-American School in San Francisco, Guy Serge Pompilus and Adam Holt from OLPC, State University of Haiti engineering student Carl Friedrich Lacrete, and four members of the NGO Haiti Outreach to execute the deployment.

IPRO 335 students worked since August 2010 on the design, drawings, fundraising, lesson plans, and all the various parts of the project. Starting in January 2011, they raised $25,000 to buy all of the equipment and make the travel and deployment possible. The flexibility and replicability of their design was put to the test in multiple ways, as the team improvised and overcame a last-minute change in the school receiving the deployment, a customs problem with some equipment, and the threat of a tropical storm.

The team set up a brand-new library at the school, full of books in French and Creole, and created an inventory, catalog, and a system for checking out the books. The team talked with the teachers at the school about using the library, about lesson plans on solar power that the team will continue to develop over the coming semester, and carried out a baseline survey on electricity, technology, and laptop usage in the home and classrooms. The team also provided training to the local maintenance staff in solar system upkeep.

The team hopes to make another trip to Haiti in just four months to complete a second installation at a second school in the Lascahobas area and return to the EFACAP school with improvements and a system check-up. The amazing work of these students to bring solar solutions to Haiti is entirely reliant on the generosity of donors who fund the trips. You can help the team demonstrate the scalability and sustainability of their model with the second deployment in December by donating here.

Find more info about the deployment, and many more photos, onHosman’s blog post about the trip.