Hydroelectricity in Karakoram mountain village protects health and forests
AHMEDABAD, PAKISTAN: In her home in the remote Hunza valley, Gul Mehreen smiles as she places a tea kettle on the electric stove in her immaculate kitchen.
In this picturesque village, perched above the gushing turquoise waters of the Hunza river, and with a view of the 8,000-metre Rakaposhi mountain, in Pakistan’s Karakoram range, women once had to walk for miles to collect firewood each day.
For the last eight years, however, hydropower has supplied the village’s energy needs, and life has gotten much easier, said Mehreen, who has an electric stove, electric oven and electric lights, fitted with energy-saving bulbs.
“With the availability of electricity we have been relieved of such burdensome work,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “The initiative holds great meaning in our lives.”
The village’s community-run micro hydropower station – built in 2008 by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme with backing from the United States Department of Agriculture and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund – produces about 190 kilowatts of electricity an hour.
That’s enough to supply power to 144 homes in Ahmedabad and nearly 110 in the nearby villages of Sultanabad and Faizabad.
Such small-scale hydropower plants are proving a key way to provide power in remote, off-grid areas of power-short Pakistan, while at the same time helping protect the environment.
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