Defining the project for the case study of Pangboche
This section details how an energy project was defined for the community of Pangboche in Nepal, so that it was in-line with their aspirations for development. This is in accordance with the first stage of the proposed methodology: Project Definition
In the case of this project, a questionnaire or site visit was not possible to set up due to funding and time constraints. However discussions were held with a community member of Pangboche who was visiting Scotland, and became the established contact for this project. From the discussions, information was gathered about life in Khumbu valley and what aspirations the community have in terms of energy development. In conjunction with this, a discussion was also had with a contact who has worked and travelled extensively in the village and therefore has a good understanding of the community from first-hand experience.
Further study was then carried out using GIS maps, Google Earth Pro (GEP), and a range of literature on the community and the region (including government documents).
There were some constraints when carrying out this section, which would look to be resolved in future case studies. Due to the time and resources available, as mentioned above only one community member and one community visitor were engaged in discussion. This means that enough information was gathered to carry out a case study, but that the true diversity of the community was likely not captured. This could hopefully be addressed in follow-up. In addition, there was a minor language barrier. Although the contact spoke English reasonably well, he is one of the few in Pangboche, and long or complex questions were often misunderstood. Therefore, it was not possible to send a questionnaire to other community members in Pangboche as it would have likely not been understood, making any results obtained questionable in validity.
Please see the "Case Study" homepage for a brief summary of Pangboche.
The following data was gathered concerning Pangboche using the methods described above:
The Khumbu valley, showing neighbouring communities
The community layout of Pangboche
Whilst undertaking this stage, it was important to speak to the community contact and let them explain their view on the situation and what they would like to see happen in the future. Through the contacts, this raised some discussion points as per the methodology to determine which development goals the energy system could address
Below are the main goals for energy development that the community of Pangboche would like to see in the future, broken down into electrical & thermal needs:
Considering the above information about the community and their development goals, the technologies to investigate further for the energy system in this case study were selected. Below is a table showing which technologies were taken forward and the reasoning behind this.
The next step of the case study in Pangboche is Data Collection