How does it work?
The local weather stations are primarily located at schools and universities connected to each other by TAHMO network. Those stations are under supervision by science teachers who get a stipend for their work. The weather stations have a built-in SIM- card and are connected with a telecom network, 98% Vodafone telecom network. For students the data is for free to view, so there can be done research to climate change. The data is collected from the stations is saved and then to be converted to a self-funded model where commercial partners pay for the data.
Specifications
The weather data is measured by several sensors. These sensors include: rainfall, wind speed, air pressure, GPS, humidity and lightning. The data of these sensors combined give an accurate image of the weather in the area.
The size of the weather station is a cylinder that has a 10 cm diameter and is 20 cm long. There are no moving parts, which makes it easy to maintain and durable at the same time. On the body of the station is a solar panel located. This powers the whole weather station, as it is very energy efficient.
The costs of the TAHMO weather station are $1500. This is very cheap compared to conventional weather station which cost about $20.000, more than 13 times as much.
Rollout
TAHMO is trying to reach the whole continent of Africa. They are trying to do this by speaking with local authorities in every country. This brings several challenges as every country is different. In Rwanda the government understood the TAHMO project and wanted to invest $300.000 immediately, as in Ghana the stakeholders were much more conservative and did not whet the appetite of weather data to improve the harvest of cocoa beans. This is why Farmerline was set up to develop business models to make the weather stations a self-funded system.
Data
This data is saved locally on the station itself every 5 minutes. Every 6 hours, the data is transferred by use of mobile telecom network, GPRS. The data is send to the conventional phone masts. Which afterwards is sent to the servers in USA named Decagon, so that everyone who is licensed can use it for its own good.
Value
The value of the data is very diffuse. Who would want to pay for this weather data? In the Netherlands the KNMI collects all the weather data and it belongs to the government. However, the KNMI does not deliver all forecasts. There are companies or institutions such as ‘weeronline’ and ‘buienalarm’ in the Netherlands that combine certain data to create a greater value. This is what also can be done in Africa and thus asking a little fee for it.