Friends of Colegio Moriah

11 years ago, Colegio Moriah installed a solar panel system onto the roof of the main building. This system was put in place to be able to provide power to the entire compound, with a diesel generator backup. At one time, they had as many as 16 batteries, and over that period of time, a few of those batteries have gone bad. They're down to 8 batteries, and a couple of them are no good, and the others are on their last leg as they are all very hot. A mission team was able to provide the funding to purchase eight batteries, and that will keep the system running. To be self-sufficient and off the grid, they need 56 batteries. This will enable the batteries to hold enough juice to get them through the night and into the next day.

With very limited use from their solar panels over this past year, it has cost them both $320 a month on average for electricity, about $4,000 a year. If they had a full bank of batteries, this would drop to almost zero as they would be self-sufficient off the grid.

The batteries that they need cost about $220 apiece, and they need 48 more. I would encourage you to take a moment to pray to see if purchasing one or more batteries is something you would like to be able to help with. We would like to provide Tanis & Esther with the funds by April 1st to have a complete bank of batteries, as this would be a huge help to them financially and for consistency of power for the church, school, and missions teams. One thing I had forgotten to mention is that there are regular blackouts that could be for minutes or hours as the electric grid in the D.R. is not dependable.

Any funds that are received that go over and above the amount we are looking to raise will go towards paying off a loan on a bus that was purchased last year.