Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vol. 17, No. 1, January 2020, pp. 36~46 ISSN: 2502-4752, DOI: 10.11591/ijeecs.v17.i1.pp36-46  36 Journal homepage: http://ijeecs.iaescore.com/ Solar powered peltier cooling storage for vaccines in rural areas Henning Buitendach, Immanuel N. Jiya and Rupert Gouws North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Apr 20, 2019 Revised Jun 15, 2019 Accepted Jul 23, 2019 The research presented in this paper proposes a new design of a vaccine cooling and storage unit that can keep vaccines in the cold chain (2°C to 8°C). This design was done to facilitate effective completion of the African vaccination week. The cooling and storage unit was designed to be compact, portable, well isolated and to make use of a PV solar energy system as a source of electricity. The cooling unit makes use of a Liquid to Air thermoelectric cooling module connected to some tubing and a liquid pump to cool the inside of the cooling unit. The design process also included designing a control system that controls the temperature inside the cooling holder and a monitoring system to monitor the battery voltage and capacity. The system also has a user interface that displays the temperatures inside and outside of the cooling holder, as well as the battery voltage and capacity. The cooling system successfully developed was able to keep vaccines in the cold chain for up to three days, the system could control the temperature of the vaccines with an accuracy of 1°C and was small and portable, but still had enough room to house up to 250 vaccines. Keywords: PV Energy Renewable Energy Vaccine Storage Copyright © 2020 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved. Corresponding Author: Jiya Immanuel Ninma, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. Email: immanueljiya@ieee.org 1. INTRODUCTION The African vaccination week, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) each year, has the potential to drastically lower the amount of deaths among young children in Africa. According to the latest study done by the WHO (World Health Organization) in 2013 around 2.9 million children under the age of 5 years died in the WHO’s African region [1]. People living in these rural parts of Africa do not get necessary medical attention and most of the time are not informed enough either. They do not have the knowledge to know when their children are ill and even if they do, they do not have any resources like a clinic or doctor to support them. The WHO state that the main cause of these deaths are pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and HIV [1]. Immunization is one of the most cost-effective and successful ways that some of these infectious diseases can be stopped to save millions of lives[2]. Each year during World Immunization Week, the WHO Regional Office for Africa coordinates the African Vaccination Week. The goal of this program, led by the WHO, is to save lives and to raise awareness under the people in these parts of Africa. For this program to be successful the vaccines used during the immunization program need to stay in the cold chain system. The cold chain system refers to the temperature controlled storage and transport of vaccines that is needed for these vaccines to arrive at the patient in a potent state. The health workers that should be concentrating on the vaccination program spend a lot of time and energy on trying to keep these vaccines in the cold chain. The required temperature that a vaccine should have to stay in the cold chain is 2°C up to 8°C [3]. Having a cooling device that can keep the vaccines at the correct temperature will give the health workers the chance to do more vaccinations [4-8]. There is also the problem of the transport of these vaccines