First Electric Lights Come to Remote Egyptian Village by Way of the Sun : Power: Government installs photovoltaic cells in program to provide electricity to desert dwellers.

The flat blue-and-white panels atop the sand-colored Bedouin houses look totally alien in the stark landscape of this tiny desert village.

But they have catapulted its inhabitants into the 20th Century. The tribal life, little changed for centuries, has been given a jolt--solar energy technology has brought electricity for the first time.

“It is as though we were dead and have become alive, as though we were buried under the ground and have been dug out,” said Karima Senoussy, her brightly embroidered robe contrasting with a wizened face bronzed by the scorching sun.

For the village’s 450 residents, the fluorescent lights with white plastic shades mean they now stay up at night seeing friends and relatives. They talk of buying a television but have yet to realize what other changes might come. They have a battery-powered radio now.

Electrification of the Western Desert village 100 miles northwest of Cairo is part of a project that the government hopes can be expanded to dozens of other remote villages.

Most of Egypt’s 58 million inhabitants have electricity, especially along the Nile and the great river’s delta, generated by power plants fueled by natural gas and by hydroelectric stations.

But the government is looking for other sources to meet the combined problems of rapidly increasing population, decreasing natural gas and petroleum resources, and rising pollution. Solar energy is on the top of the list.

“Solar energy technology has expanded tremendously, and the price of the units is becoming more affordable,” said Maher Abaza, Egypt’s minister of electricity and energy.

He said a study found that it was cheaper to provide desert villages like Awlad el Sheik with photovoltaic cells, which transform solar rays into electricity, than linking them to the main power grid.

The use of solar energy in Egypt dates back to the 1970s when the American University in Cairo used Bassaissa village in the Nile delta as a prototype for fostering development through natural resources.

Salah Arafa, a physics professor at the university who helped start the project, stressed that solar energy was feasible only in rural areas with unfettered access to the sun. High-rises in cities block the light.

He said money was needed to spread solar energy, and recommended that Egypt subsidize solar as it does conventional electricity.

“Since solar energy is the future . . . we should have a long-term financing system,” he said.

Government officials have not said how much would be spent on solar energy. In Awlad el Sheik, which means “children of the sheik,” a German grant is helping finance electrification.

Twenty of the village’s 40 houses got rooftop solar panels in September. The families paid 105 pounds (about $30) for each unit and were told they would have to pay more later, but the government has not said how much or when.

The long-term effect of electricity on their primitive life is still unclear.

Mud-brick houses replaced their tents in recent years, but the floors are still sand. Furniture is minimal; the villagers sit and sleep on handmade carpets.

With water available only from a well 2 1/2 miles away, the women do not dream of washing machines. And with kitchens consisting of outdoor mud-brick ovens, refrigerators and toasters are a world away.

But the 62-year-old village head, Abdel-Wanees Breik, said electricity already has changed their lives.

“We used to sleep shortly after sunset,” he said. “Now that we have electricity, we stay up late and visit with the neighbors who are all cousins.”

The villagers are shepherds, like their forefathers. They live on the meat and milk of camels, cows and sheep. The women use wool from the animals to weave colorful carpets to supplement family incomes.

A 12-year-old named Nagwa said she enjoyed playing into the night with friends under the village’s eight new street lights. But she added: “We still get up early to tend to the animals.”