The PowerHouse School Concept

Electricity from batteries is expensive, even more so, when they are charged with diesel generators or solar energy. I’m on time of use metering, 15 cents/kwh on peak, 5 cents/kwh off peak the closest thing to making storing off peak and using on-peak cost effective were large systems with external electrolyte tanks. I love your idea, I wonder if just electrolyte could be transported? Lead acid batteries last an order of a magnitude less recharch cycles than lithium ion, making the latter more cost effective despite their greater initial expense.

Great idea, Willis. NGO funding, maybe?

Just a question on used batteries. Do the used auto batteries only lose their max amps rating, or do they also lose storage capacity. Maybe the number of charges you can get on a lead-acid battery for lights + TV is much greater than for starting a car. The one problem I do remember is faster self-discharge for the used batteries. Any design mods to convert something designed for a high current motor to something for a low slow current TV?

Why only one business? For a long time now, vehicle alternators/generators have been used for arc welders:
Nov/Dec 1980 Mother Earth News
Build a Portable DC ARc Welder for $20
http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/portable-dc-arc-welder-zmaz80ndzraw.aspx
This has been up for about a decade, AC motor driving Jeep alternator for DC Welder, clear wiring diagram. It still shows up on searches, maybe it’s forgotten.
http://www.huv.com/jon/jeep/Welder/portable-welder.html
There are also smaller alternators, I have a small cache of Ford 1980-90’s “round lug” that use an external regulator which are freely available as a tractor part, about 30A. You can parallel them, even switch units on/off for rough amperage control.
So set up a welding shop that makes profit, that charges batteries when idle for profit.
But due to the problems of syncing up AC between alternators, it’d be better to direct planned excess capacity to driving a modern electronic inverter using DC to make AC for local distribution, which would be funded by the other profits.
Would expand, but must run. See ya, Willis.

Ah, Willis, this post brings back distant memories of growing up in a two roomed Victorian slum in a small town in Scotland immediately post WW2. There, I’ve given away my age.
Ours was one of the majority of houses which was not, and never had been, connected to the local grid. We had one running cold water tap, lighting was by coal gas or kerosene, heating was the single coal fire, and there was an outdoor toilet shared with six other families.
The sole electrical appliance was an old bakelite valve radio, powered by a large dry cell battery delivering, from memory, something in the region of 100v; and also two heavy lead acid cells.
The battery was purchased (and was quite expensive) from the local music and record store, but the wet cells had to be recharged about every two weeks. It was my job to take these cells (and they were very heavy indeed) to the place that did a swap for recharged ones – at a cost of course.
Unsurprisingly, radio use was strictly rationed in our home. And I never did manage to construct a crystal set that actually worked.

Nothing works in these types of areas unless they can be easily and locally sourced. Trying to figure costs based upon US retail – Lowe’s or home depot or some internet purveyor – does not work.
Try getting replacement parts when they have to be imported. Hope you are not an impatient and hypertensive sort.

The idea of lead-acid batteries is nice. Older ones do still work but, are less efficient due to the breakdown of the (sponged lead). I use that term because that’s always what it looked like to me. That same mule can turn a wheel with generators or alternators attached as well. Might be a pretty big wheel though. The batteries themselves break down and leave deposits that settle to the bottom and can create shorts between the plates inside the battery.
I don’t think it would be too difficult to put purge drains on existing batteries though that would both be able to exchange charged electrolytes and at the same time be able to filter out the burnt lead plate material.
Compressed air is stored quite easily and can also be transported and also be used for a large number of devices.

Well, I did make a comment regard the ‘grid’ on the original post along the lines of ‘how is the power to be distributed amongst the people and how are they going be able to use it i.e. with appliances’
And yes, I worked in Africa (Congo and Gabon) in the jungle for a while – so I have some first hand experience (granted that was back in the early 80’s though).
Electricity remains and will continue to remain, a ‘point of supply’ fuel for third world contries who cannot easily install a grid system. Such systems are very expensive to install but of course, usually last a pretty long time. In the Lesotho example, if the population is 2million (guestimate), and the alleged investment is 9billion, that works out 4500 per head of population. If we say, folk live in families of 4, that works out at 18000 per household. Now, currently, it is possible to buy a top quality 3kw solar power system for about half that sum.
Surely, in the context of common sense – it would make more sense to install solar power to every household?
It’s a renewable, it’s installation is of course part of the distribution (i.e. no network grid required), and the spare funds could be used for supplying appliances? To my mind, THIS is exactly the logic that should be applied to the forced redistribution of wealth via the IPCC induced government initiatives. I mean, feck it – if they want to do good – do it properly?
just sayin……
. at i use

Flywheels can store energy and don’t have a charge-discharge cycle problem
There are “glow-in-the-dark” substances that store more, but solar to LED can illuminate a room.
Sterling engines can use any heat source. There is even one as a desk toy that will run on the heat of your hand.
One possibility would be to do heavy R&D, get patents, license the efficiency stuff to industry/consumer, but use it in these areas.
Perhaps they could sell citizenships – passports. There are enough sovereigns within the evil empire, but some might want to be able to live outside. Can you put a price on fredom?

Bula,
Try mini steam. Tiny Tech in India http://www.tinytechindia.com/Template/index.php.
25kva from steam engine. USD $18,000 for boiler, engine,alternator.
Add your biomass via what ever means and you have your energy problems done!

Hi Willis
I agree with what you say. I get to remote Africa time to time and one of the thriving businesses you see are little huts that charge batteries, mostly mobile phone, but also car batteries for running whatever. A couple of weeks back in central Madagascar I saw something even better. I was in a mineral exploration camp staying in a small tent erected inside a grass hut and on returning after dinner was surprised to find 4 or 5 workers sitting around a power board inside the hut, outside my tent, observing while their mobile phones recharged. You can’t get better than that, free power 🙂

From tz2026 on September 28, 2013 at 3:47 pm:

Flywheels can store energy and don’t have a charge-discharge cycle problem

Flywheels need maintenance, when spinning flywheels fail they tend to effectively explode thus they need heavy enclosures, one sized for even household-sized electrical needs would be considerably heavy. And flywheels by their nature don’t travel well, you could build one into the heavy frame of a vehicle, but then you also have to move the vehicle to move the flywheel.
Don’t forget the fancy electronics involved in magnetically speeding up and taking energy from a sealed flywheel unit.
Doesn’t exactly scream “Suitable for dirt-poor rural communities without service centers in the same country” to me.

Sterling engines can use any heat source. There is even one as a desk toy that will run on the heat of your hand.

And after many decades of trying to scale them up from desk toys to something that can power a house, we’re still waiting for a practical unit.

I had just yesterday purchased a minty copy of Integrated Circuit Projects Volume 1 for 15 cents from the local Goodwill to add to my Forrest M Mims collection of useful books and here he is today commenting. Thank you Forrest for the electronics education you have provided me via you many informative books. The IC Projects Vol. 1 has to be one of your earliest publications.

Having had some experience with micro loans. The problem is the social structure and who owns it and profits by it.. If the tribe owns it, no one pays for the service and there is no incentive for anyone to keep it going. Somebody has to want to own and profit from the power, water, whatever.

https://twitter.com/Ruth_A_Buzzi/statuses/383959516284325889

Willis, thank you for sharing your wonderful stories! I’ve done some of this work, focused upon conversion of animal manure into methane gas with anaerobic biodigesters. My first design was published by the Center for Community Change about 1980, using geotextile to create a simple, lined digester of plug-flow configuration. These are now common all over Asia, called “CIGAR” (covered in-ground anaerobic reactor).
I’ve worked on pig farms in the Philippines that generate 100% of their electricity for pumps, lights etc. using swine manure gas, burned in a stationary internal combustion engine/generator set. Amazing economics, the engines are just cheap auto engines….when the sulfides cause the engine to seize, it gets tossed & a replacement is easily fitted in. I’ve seen some pretty ugly installations, but the lights come on at night.
Household electricity is an interesting challenge, perhaps we need to break consumption down by the appliance? The One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) program seeks to distribute rather simple laptop PCs to children throughout the developing world, and these units are charged with a small hand-crank on the side. I’ve read where, in many homes, the light from the screen is the only artificial light for the household at night. See http://one.laptop.org/ Similarly, small radios, LED lights and other appliances might have their own individual hand crank/manual charging device… I have flashlights like this in my home for emergencies. Can’t beat ’em.
Like you, I investigated solar power for very modest applications in my Latin American and Asian farm biodigester projects and found the economics wanting (2005). Perhaps that is changing, but I’m sold on manual charging for small applications. Put a bicycle generator in some houses, everyone would ride it and charge the batteries. Might work. Hell, Americans should do some of that, we are all fat as the Philippine pigs!! Cheers, Willis! Charles the DrPH

Workable solutions to third world poverty have been available for at least 70 years, yet do not get implemented.
My dad and uncles went to many third world countries in the early 1940s in World War II, bringing all sorts of power generation equipment with them. Much of the equipment was left behind at war’s end. It quickly quit working, after a short life.
The Rural Electrification Act in the US could have provided batteries and windmills to charge them, as it was an available technology. Instead, grid power was extended into the rural areas.
I admire those with the urge to help people in need. I share that impulse to help. But, ideas like this schoolhouse powerhouse are too naive to be effective. One must solve a myriad of social and governmental problems first.
If it were easy to do, the 300 million people in India would all have electric power today. That’s right, one-third of India’s people have no electricity.

Lead acid batteries are attractive due to their ubiquity but their care, maintenance and expected service life makes them a poor choice. A better choice would be the nickel iron battery, they withstand all kinds of abuse you would expect in the boonies of a third world country and still last for decades. Some of the batteries made by Edison battery company are still serviceable in electric cars from the early 1900’s.

For some time, a project called LUTW (Light Up the World) ran from a group at the U of Calgary. Seems to be quiescent now, don’t know. Specialized in setting up remote villages with [car batteries charged] by solar or micro-hydro, etc., which powered white LED lighting for homes and schools.

I had seem this awhile back. It’s a “shop in a box”. The group that developed it is using it to make kilns for biochar, but the concept lends itself to the locals being trained as mechanics to build and repair the target system. In your case, something like this could be used to build infrastructure for your electrical system. Once the target system is built it can be moved to the next site.

I’d only add that the ventilation of the container holding the batteries should be very, very vigorous – LA charging releases hydrogen from the cell….
There are interesting videos on YouTube of the explosive results of battery de-construction.

@u.k.(us) says:
>Want electricity ?, you get a stable government and build this (or something like it):
>http://gizmodo.com/5850299/americas-largest-coal-power-plant-burns-11-million-tons-of-bituminous-a-year
>Bigger is more efficient, not the other way around.
>And, if only it was so easy.
I humbly beg to differ. The system efficiency of coal-fired, distributed electricity, calculated from the energy available in the coal, is lower than the application of that coal to a local fire if the application is thermal (heating, cooking). The total emissions (PM, CO and CO2) are less from the distributed production sites (assuming current technologies in both cases).
The system efficiency for electricity generation and distribution for non-thermal applications is higher than local solutions, but only because the technologies offered at a small scale are inefficient, not ‘in principle’. The alternatives are improving every year. Distributed electric power is about 30% of the energy in the coal, typically, with many lower number examples around. The efficiency of combined cycle gasification of coal to electricity is probably going to be more cost efficient on a micro scale that at a large scale because of the low investment and physical risks.
The available solutions for electricity include : TEG (thermo-electric generators) at a few % efficiency. There are two types available: the ≈250 degree ones (Ref Micropelt in Germany) are set by the solder melting temperature and the ceramic ones which operate at about 700C (Ref: Berkeley).
Another is thermo-acoustic generation (Ref: Prof Steve Garrett, Penn State, other researchers in Netherlands, and another group in the UK). This uses resonant sound to vibrate a generator and is actually a form of Stirling engine driven by external heat. The math model for designing these is available free from the Los Alamos thermocoustics lab Steve used to lead (download at their website). It is a universal tool.
Another is small scale steam power driving a single piston engine (Ref Brazil) using wood. Output is in the >kW range.
TEG’s operated on the side of a stove used for space heating do not have to be efficient, the heat passing through them was headed into the room anyway. In Mongolia these units have reached the power output needed to run a TV and lights. The stoves are highly suited to the use of the ceramic version, fragile as they are.
There is a very nice project in Central America that uses the power available at school to charge ‘discarded’ cell phone batteries. Old cell phone batteries which will not run a phone are still very powerful and can run 1 to 3 HE-LED’s for many hours before needing a recharge. A large Motorola battery can run a student’s light for 2 hrs per night for 3 weeks. This is an available resource that is often thrown away, literally. Converting them locally using a soldering gun and HD-LED’s is very easy. Many imaginative versions of this are extant. Obviously they can be recharged using solar panels, car 12 v plugs and mains.
It is also worth mentioning that the use of transported batteries for remote power, mentioned by Willis, is widespread in Africa. In order to maximize the benefits to the consumer, battery manufacturers make ‘TV batteries’ which are specially crafted to give deep cycling, long term service and are fitted with two carrying handles so they can be moved by two people who hold one each. These are available at any battery supplier in Lesotho. They are typically run to zero and charged once per week. They are not ‘float application’ batteries used in cars. Neither are they high current versions typical of fork lifts and golf carts. They are designed for the typical domestic pattern of use.
Solar powered lanterns (numerous), kerosene lanterns with TEG’s, stoves similarly equipped (Biolite) and solar laptop chargers are appearing left and right. There are waterproof cell phone chargers that hang on a lanyard, there are hand-squeezed flashlights (torches). Micro-hydro (multiple, Nepal), ram pumps connected to tiny Pelton wheels (New Dawn Eng, Swaziland), there are a great many options popping up left and right.
I have worked with windmills up to 18 ft diameter in Africa. They are devices that require continuous monitoring and regular maintenance. A TATU survey of water windmills in Transkei (Eastern Cape) showed 80-85% of installed community machines not working at any one time. Even with centralized professional maintenance it is difficult to keep them running because a big storm can break a large number at once. Local maintenance is a huge challenge though not impossible to surmount. The key of course is education and training.

Willis,
I, too, have had fun playing with car alternators. Got one of those kits to generate DC for universal motors, put it on my old Chevy and it worked fine. They work because the voltage on the car charging system is largely limited by the battery load. Disconnect the battery and the output voltage goes through the roof. This is useful when you want to power your electric drill.
Unfortunately, it was less useful at sea. I was crewing on a 30ft Cal Boat off the west coast of Mexico. The owner had two sets of batteries charged by the marine diesel engine, with a switch to send the power to one or the other set. But flipping the switch would yield a momentary disconnect. When he did this with the engine running it unloaded the alternator and the resulting voltage spike blew every light bulb in the boat–including the bulb in the photo-electric mechanism of the auto-pilot tiller device. It also blew the voltage regulator and thus killed all our generated power until we rigged a field expedient with a big rheostat somebody found in Tehuantepec.
It is true that the alternator generates AC that it then rectifies to DC. But the AC frequency depends entirely on the rotational speed of the alternator, and is generally way above 60 cycle for any useful output voltage. To run the AC through a transformer would require a transformer wound for a specific frequency and mechanical speed regulation to maintain that frequency.
Working with a friend who was into wind power, we once substituted permanent ceramic magnets for the rotor windings. Worked, and allowed us to get rid of the regulator and associated excitation losses, but I’m not sure that was any real advantage.
Car parts in general offer fascinating possibilities for 3rd world applications, being so cheap and plentiful. I shop at Pick-A-Part; it’s good for the imagination .

Sorry, missed the link earlier in the thread. Sometimes I start at the end and work up 🙂

tz2060: Can you put a price on fredom?
Can you even spell it? LOL

Kev-in-Uk says:
September 28, 2013 at 3:31 pm
If we say, folk live in families of 4, that works out at 18000 per household. Now, currently, it is possible to buy a top quality 3kw solar power system for about half that sum.

Kevin–this is so rational that it escapes most of us who want to help. I often wonder why more solar solutions are not found–I was forced to go to solar when the power company wanted $30,000 to hook my rural home to the grid for the privilaege of paying them every month. Putting in a solar system that runs my 2200 ft home was only $17,000. Gues which way I went? Small soalr setups are so very practical and low tech…People say they are not efficient or cost effective–I honestly haven’t found that to be the case. I had to learn more about electricity than I wanted to, but I’m sure the young people of Africa will be quicker than I was.

Allan MacRae says:
September 28, 2013 at 6:05 pm
LUTW designs solar PV systems that respond to the specific energy needs of families in off-grid communities. A simple solar PV system

Yes–very practical.

RACookPE1978 says:
September 28, 2013 at 6:43 pm I like the manual effort required for bicycled-powered generators and solar-powered generators and local household stoves. Corrupt local tribal rulers will never pedal their bikes to get light, but WILL steal the gasoline and diesel generators in nice portable carriers to generate power for THEIR armories and air conditioning and Mercedes

This is the crux–will the solar be left to the villages and families that need it? In many cases not…why? Mike Wryley is asking the right question–not how can we help, but why at this point in time do they need help? Still?

Mike Wryley says:
September 28, 2013 at 9:02 pm
Unfortunately, most of you people are confusing the symptom for a cause.
Ever ask yourself why you’re trying to help people with a 4,000 year head start ?

One more – a portable solar and wind power solution that costs households $80/mo:
http://www.indiancountrynews.com/index.php/news/9-news-from-through-out-indian-country/2406-solar-project-brings-electricity-to-navajo-nation-homes

milodonharlani says:
September 28, 2013 at 1:54 pm
A problem I have experienced in the developing world is lack of money. I mean that literally. Coins & currency are often in short supply to non-existent.
///////////////////////////////
Milodon, I know this seems a little far-fetched – but what about coining one’s OWN local currency – coined in kW/h ?
All you’d need to achieve that, was a little book-keeping – whis in itself is a valuable lesson to learn for students – and something representing a kW/h for peoples’ daily trade.
This way, ANYTHING would go for currency – even kauri-shells, or something – if people agreed to use it as money among themselves. And they would, because, at the end of the day, they could trade their Kauris for a battery-charge at the power-station.
That way, the power-station would serve as a bank, too, while providing people with cheap, affordable energy.
I like your idea a lot, Willis! Maybe you should give it a try and contact one of the big donoring foundations to get it running, like the Bill-Gates-Foundation, or you may give it a try on Kickstarter.
Micro-banking, berhaps? Also, there are banks around which profess in fair trade and ecological investments – at least over here in over-ecologized Germany.
You rock, Willis! Go for it!

As other commenters have pointed out, even the best-intentioned and best-designed projects will fail in an environment of corruption and violence. I checked the history of Lesotho according to Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lesotho
and it’s not encouraging. From its independence in 1966 to the rise of the LCD Party in 1997-1998, Lesotho suffered from political instability and outright coups. Since 1998 the country has been more stable, but the LCD Party has retained control of the government. Personally I think reform is more likely when the “opposition” is strong enough to win the occasional election.

I have to agree with the cautionary comments regarding foreign investment and aid into some of these countries. The top down corruption and skimming of funding occurs more frequently in these types of ‘young’ countries – heck, it occurs in our own established democracies!
It is the same with ‘giving’ to big charities – all very well donating a few pounds/dollars, but when you check out some of these charities’ financial records, a large percentage is ‘lost’ to costs and executive salaries. I would always prefer to see smaller localised operations because there is less ‘business’ through which funds can be lost or skimmed.
The point being that simply cyhucking funds around does not always make things better – and can often encourage things to be worse due to the unscrupulous officals, warlords, criminal gangs, etc.

In many music festival in the UK such as Glastonbury and Shambala, performers and musicians use solar panels to power their equipment when away from the grid. They’ve been doing this for a fair few years now and probably have a good insight into the most efficient methods of energy generation. Maybe Willis saw similar set ups in Burning man which I would guess gets more sunshine than UK festivals.

Thanks for posting this Willis. Loved your travelogue, and was even thinking of travelling to Liverpool to see if I could intercept you there, but life got in the way.
There’s a chap in Scotland by the name of Hugh Piggott who teaches people how to build their own windmill. The idea is people pay him to learn as they make a windmill with their own hands. He then gives that windmill to one of his neighbours. Any money he makes is used to finance trips to the third world to show them how to do it.
Using his methodology, it is possible to build a 5kW unit for around £200. For the capstan (the bit that swivels around), one can use the bits from old car axles. He teaches how to actually make your own axial flow alternator using neodymium magnets and wire encased in epoxy resin. He also sells plans over the internet.
I was recently looking for LED lights for a home automation project, and I came across these. They use 6W @ 12V DC, are the equivalent of a 50W incandescent bulb, give off a very bright light, can be dropped and mishandled without worry, can be put directly in a G4 socket, and last north of 20,000 hours, for less than $5 all in. Amazing little things.
Also, Yandex “Listeroid”, a single cylinder diesel engine (there’s also a twin, I think) that runs a generator. These things are indestructible, economical, easy to maintain and some are still in use after 20 years of non-stop service. The EPA have banned them in the US (bedwetting about “emissions”), but you can still buy them in “parts”.
Eventually, I’d like to buy one of these and enclose it in an insulated cabinet to keep the noise and heat in. I would then run the cooling through a large Hot Water Cylinder which would heat water. I think you only need about 70C at the end of the exhaust to lift any smoke away, so all the rest of the heat can go towards heating hot water, so you’re getting a “two-fer”. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I reckon I can substantially reduce my overall energy bills with one of these things. Over half of the energy used in an ICE is wasted as heat.
Of course, the elephant in the room is storage, and I don’t have any really great ideas on that. If I had the time and money, I would look into flywheels. There’s just one moving part, and no nasties to get rid of. It is possible to make passive magnetic bearings now, and by evacuating any air from the enclosure there are very little “idling” or friction losses. They too could last forever and done right, there’s very little to go wrong with them.
By doing one for a house gives the owner independence, and the flywheels wouldn’t need to be too big, so less worry about them bursting from centripetal forces. For instance, in Formula One racing they have a thing called KERS, which drivers can use to help them overtake other cars. It’s a flywheel that can deliver 60-80kW in a very short burst. I’m not suggesting using one of these for storing home energy, it’s just an example of what is doable now.
That’s the one thing that makes oil so useful. It is its own storage medium. If we could crack that for electricity, and do so on the level of the individual or family, it could be revolutionary.

NikFromNYC said on September 29, 2013 at 1:25 am:

kadaka cited: “This has been up for about a decade, AC motor driving Jeep alternator for DC Welder, clear wiring diagram. It still shows up on searches, maybe it’s forgotten.”
In a thread that includes circuit guru Forrest Mims, it is notable that a single diode is a mean substitute for a four diode full wave rectifier that allows an alternator to tax its driver continuously.

It’s the same on the Mother Earth News original diagram.
And do you know what it’s for?
The alternator has its own diode pack inside, that single diode isn’t for rectifying the generated AC. And alternators are regularly set up internally as three-phase so a standard 4-way bridge wouldn’t work.
That big single diode is on the Ground (G) terminal, connected to the battery in the diagram. It keeps the electrons flowing in the right direction.
Normally the armature (A) terminal goes to the positive terminal of the battery for charging, after going through the regulator (becomes BAT terminal). Batteries discharge by electrons leaving the negative terminal and entering the positive. The alternator sucks the electrons out of the battery at the positive terminal. The battery negative terminal often goes to a motor ground lead (bolted right to the block) with other frame/body grounds, and that’s it. The alternator returns the electrons by the Ground connections.
For the welder, the Armature runs to the battery negative. The Armature wants to suck in electrons, as wired they would come from the Ground terminal. You’d have a short circuit. The big single diode is a one-way gate, blocking the flow of electrons from Ground to the battery, preventing it from being a short circuit.
When using the welder, electrons flow from battery negative through big diode to Ground, to ground clamp, to rod and rod holder, to battery positive. If that was it then you’d be welding with just the battery. But Armature is sucking electrons from battery negative, shoving them out at Ground, and thanks to big diode those electrons go to ground clamp with the rest.
The problem with the welder as shown is the current always only goes one way through the battery. Forced reverse current flow, aka charging, recharges the battery but also reforms the electrodes. It’ll keep working with a depleted battery, residual magnetism will let the alternator self-energize once it’s spinning. But as it’ll essentially be forcing further draining of a dead battery, severe damage could result.
So make provisions to recharge the battery when not welding. If you use an external regulator, while the alternator is spinning, with creative switching you can have the alternator charge the battery.
And also charge other batteries you have laying around, preferably for profit.

I believe the essence of the original suggestion is cheapness and availability of spare parts.
Yes, running the grid to all homes in Africa would be best but its not going to happen in our children’s lifetime.
Yes, much better batteries exist than old lead acid car batteries, but cost a fortune by comparison.
Compressed air is interesting but I would not like to be around when a rusting ar reservoir goes bang. (pressure vessels need strict maintenance checks)
As Willis stated, you need a system that locals can ‘own’ or buy into, using skills that they have or can acquire easily.
Old auto parts are ubiquitous, therefore very suitable.
The idea of installing PV panels in lieu of the grid at a cheaper cost is good, but it is a very high cost compared to the original suggestion.
This suggestion could kick start thousands of micro businesses and self help groups, increasing skill levels across a continent.

How about adding clean water to the micro-power and communication mix? Dean Kamen and evil capitalistic Coke Corp have teamed up to really help small villages do a lot of what we are talking about here. Very clever idea. Tell me what is wrong with it. Power for cell phones and a central TV too. Battery recharge as well (for flashlight lighting). A woman entrepreneur to run it and perhaps begin to pay for it?
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/dean-kamen-400-million-cell-phones-in-africa-wi0TV5FYQCqcFA6LofJM9w.html
Bernie

NYCNik: I had a physics lab TA who, armed with his Ph.D a few years later, was working for an industrial firm evaluating instrumentation. He could recite in detail everything about electrons and holes and quantum states, but I had to explain to him that semiconductor diodes passed current in only one direction. Lots of credentials, no qualifications.

Fuel cells? Using methane from dung/termite mounds etc…. armchair thoughts.

from your prior article dealing with coal for heat, I was wondering how a remote boiler fired by coal using steam to drive alternators (or gens with converters) as well as piping heat to a few homes.
w/o knowing the exact topography its hard to say if its feasible, but if homes are close together (I cannot imagine they are large) one boiler could heat a few as well as charge batteries.
don’t see where you could get to the scale needed to be an actual coal fired gen plant, but the battery charging could be a secondary usage of the heat.

Crispin, Thank you. As others have stated for remote rural off grid applications, efficiency is really not necessary. That it is simple, cheap and works is the key. The range of fuels is growing. India is expert at low cost cow dung methane and using it as a kitchen fuel. To produce a cheap integrated unit requires a little bit of design engineering, its not rocket science.
An oddity I see with electricity, it needs to be simple, plug and play so to speak, or it gets left alone and dies. Odd that.

Instead of solar what about coconuts? Coconut diesel could be used to power a generator to charge the car batteries. No deforestation necessary, locally available, free and renewable. To get it going the generator could be sold dirt cheap to a local who presents the best plan to run the operation for his own profit.
http://www.onecountry.org/e151/e15101as_Deamer_profile.htm
In Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, cars are run off coconut diesel. Necessity is the mother of adaptation. This was apparently in reaction to the trade blockade. The fule was also used in the Philippines in WW2 to power generators.
http://www.kokonutpacific.com.au/CoconutBiofuelKP.php
http://youtu.be/p6KChpTMfUI

I’m in complete agreement with Willis about “expensive energy kills poor people”.
Pielke the Younger had a series of articles on the subject in the fall of 2012 for instance here: Against Modern Energy Access. http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/11/against-modern-energy-access.html
Pielke the Younger wrote:

Access to energy is one of the big global issues that has hovered around the fringes of international policy discussions such as the Millennium Development Goals or climate policy, but which has been getting more attention in recent years. In my frequent lectures on climate policy I point out to people that 1.3 billion people worldwide lack any access to electricity and an 2.6 billion more cook with wood, charcoal, tree leaves, crop residues and animal waste (an additional 400 million cook with coal).
The “success” scenarios of climate advocates hoping to power the world with carbon-free energy almost always leave a billion or more people in the dark and several billion cooking with dirty fuels. Sometimes, magic is invoked to suggest that “electricity can be brought to everyone” without appreciably increasing carbon emissions. Of course, if we could bring electricity to the 1.3 billion without any access with no effect on emissions, then we could probably do it for 6 billion others.

Willis’s example of the diesel powered, donkey transported electrical grid goes a great way to illustrate exactly how important rural electrification is to rural people. That these people are willing to invent, and put up with about the most ridiculously absurd and inefficient method electrical transmission possible – automobile battery by donkey – shows how important it is to them. Ironically, that method seems to work better in practice, and is less ridiculous and absurd than the method being proposed by the 1st world Peace Corp workers back in the ’80s.
What ever the solution is it must work, it must be affordable, it shouldn’t break easily, it must be repairable, the parts available, and it must not make anything else worse.
I really like the bit: “If it doesn’t pay, it doesn’t stay.” This is the ultimate economic reality in much of the world were there is no surplus to spare for someone else’s bright ideas.
Some first thoughts:
I have to ask, what will really change with the Powerhouse School Concept? I like it on the one hand, I think it has potential to fill a niche need, and I don’t like it on the other hand because I don’t think it will really solve the problem of lack of rural development and may have some unexpected social repercussions.
How much new wealth or economic activity will Willis’s scheme generate? Willis is a pretty astute analyst when it comes to the numbers, but I wonder if he has missed some possible negative outcomes: like what happens to the guy with the donkey cart? and what happens to the guy who was running the charging business out of the back door of the sawmill powerhouse, and what about the sawmill truck drivers in between? These people represent economic activity and personal income that are at risk of being co-opted by the Willis’s scheme.
I have to ask because I’ve spent enough time myself out on the Reservation with tribal peoples to understand how these businesses often really run. I don’t know, but I suspect in Willis’ Paraguayan example that the real cost to the sawmill of diesel fuel, operator, and capital expenses were not being fully captured in the price of recharging the batteries – that is if all of the electricity wasn’t being out and out stolen from the mill’s owner and the costs to the enterprise had more to do with bribes and payola than no.2 diesel and motor oil.
One factor that differs between Willis’ program and the Paraguayan model is that the latter had almost no capital costs of its own. The generator and all of its capital and overhead expenses is paid for the mill, the donkey cart already paid for, there is a [small] available supply of used car batteries around that are inexpensive enough for the farmers to obtain – probably because they are too decrepit to start a car.
The more successful the Powerhouse School Concept becomes the more it will push the economics of return-on-investment into the area of having to deal with users having to pay for new auto batteries more often, or more expensive deep-cycle batteries up front.
I like that Willis’s proposal is containerized and probably modular. There seem to be a possibility of significant economies of scale, as well as making the scheme turn-key and franchisable. Keep the consultants out of it, but leave the design to professionals. Big plus.
Question is, will it “pay” in reality? and who will finance the initial capitalization of operation? I’m sure Willis has costed all of this out, but as a business proposition his scheme has has to bear much more financial responsibilities for its own upkeep than the original Paraguayan model. As Willis mentioned, people in these circumstances have irregular incomes. Businesses have difficulties with irregular incomes when they have fixed capital expenses. If the scheme is not able to help create real economic development in the adult population of the communities it serves then it will always be at grave risk of not being able to “pay” – and it won’t “stay”.
I like the educational and technical training aspect of the program but I don’t like the child labor aspect of the program. Does the income from the scheme pay the child workers? The school? The schoolmaster? How do the impoverished parents pay their own kids for the household electricity? If the Powerhouse School doesn’t help alleviate the problem of adult non-employment then all you will wind up doing is exacerbating the problem of the flight of human talent, young people, and resources to the city, leaving everyone else much as before. The kids are going to move to a grid connection once they figure out electricity and that real work can be gotten out of it.
The Powerhouse School concept may be some kind of a stop-gap, but at some point you have to raise the threshold of electricity use for these people to the realm of ‘modern’. This is something I hope most people can agree on because – expensive energy kills poor people.
I like the idea that the project will be supervised by someone with some education and social independence [especially social independence] in the village, the teacher, but I also don’t like the idea of concentrating economic activity at the school, government run or otherwise.
Unfortunately, in my last analysis, if ideas such as the Powerhouse School are not protected by an “open-access order”† society, then it will likely remain marginal and incapable of producing the real kinds of change and development that the undeveloped nations desperately need.
That’s my opinion,
W^3
† The Natural State: The Political Economy of Non-Development, Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast; UCLA Center for Comparative and Global Research, 2005 – http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=22899

Any plan that includes child involvement in a non-parasitic role is going to bring out the leftist nutter city core cranks who never grew up on a farm and who don’t know that children who work in the home/farm are not victims of greedy overlords but are contributing members of the family/village unit and tend to be productive their entire lives.
Oh jeeze – I just read a recent post and it’s already happening.
Anyway – this problem of last mile electrification can be solved with RTG encased in concrete bunkers to keep vandals out. The run 24/7/365 and are too cheap to meter.

Thorium burning pebble bed reactors small enough to sit in the back of a pickup. The PRC also has this problem, and they’ve been working on a solution.

RACookPE1978 says:
September 29, 2013 at 11:06 am
I was thinking more of the heating issue (and I see I phrased it ALL wrong,sorry) as w/o that electricity does not matter.
lot of home wood fired boilers up here, some coal too, heating multiple buildings on peoples land. not very labor intensive and they don’t operate at steam levels.
radiant heat in floors would help, again no idea of the ground conditions there so may not even support piping.
thought maybe would be a manner to reclaim and somehow reheat (like locomotive superheaters through stacks) to drive rotation to charge batteries.
w/o a heated home a light to read by means nothing.

I have been looking for small scale energy production that makes sense for a long time. Untill last week nothing knocked my socks off. Last week I found this: http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2013/acs-presspac-august-28-2013/producing-hydrogen-from-water-with-carbon-charcoal-powder.html. It involves putting carbon in water and zapping the mixture with a lasar. Hydrogen is released. With some quick calculations, assuming 100 % efficiency, less than 10% of the hydrogen is needed to produce the hydrogen output using fuel cells. Note: I have not cheked the numbers for errors yet. And carbon can be made from agricultural waste, algae, used bicycle tires …

w.w.wygart,
Of course the kinds of systems I am talking about don’t have to be used with traditional draft animals. They can be, and pretty much have been, scaled for any size or type of domestic animal from the dog on up to elephants.
I also take issue with the point that it wouldn’t be valuable work. Such systems have been used to power wells and mills and were an important part of the very early stages of the industrial revolution.
As Wills says, you can’t just drop modern power systems on remote primitive villages and expect to be successful. You have to start with systems they can maintain themselves.

Willis,
You should try setting up a demonstration project. I don’t think you would even need to leave the US. There are probably bush villages in Alaska that could benefit from this. See if Anthony will let you see if you can raise the funding to set up the demonstration through WUWT.

We frame it as bringing “reproductive rights.”

I call it erection management. Get your hands around that problem as a responsible individual and it stops being a social problem. You own it – you manage it. I’ll remain amazed till I die that reproduction rights, a pseudonym for kill a fetus on sight, is a constitutional right but birth is not even when the impregnation is recreational. Life is a bitch when you’re too young to vote. I’ll repeat here that I am an atheist, not a right winger bible thumping snake shaker.

An old acquaintance of mine started up a company in Nepal decades ago, I think around 1980. He sold a small PV panel, lead-acid battery, and a tangle of electronics plus a little fluorescent light to families back in the hills of Nepal. Just looked him up. Apparently the company is going strong, having sold 15,000 sets to families who use it to read at night. TV or a grid hookup is impossible in the Himalaya. Today they use LED and the systems are very much more efficient, but still use lead acid batteries. It is the Solar Electric Company, in Kathmandu.

Some emerging simple rules.
If it works, it works, matters not what the experts say.
Bugger the economics if the selected fuel is cheaper/available on site, use it.
How much does it cost to mass produce a 1kw, single moving part, commutator, slip-ring, brushless generator using mainly plastics?
How much does it cost to produce a similar, compatible CD motor turbine(Tesla disc turbine) running on steam or compressed air to drive such a generator?
Trouble with NGOs and Green corporations, they like the marketing images but will not do the real work, getting it to the people.
And yes using scrap f150 pickups and kitting them out as mobile power stations is a great idea.

http://www.pewresearch.org/category/interactives/quizzes/
Dear Willis
I write using solar power stored in lead acid batteries. Try the quiz above 93% of PEW Foundation followers failed to get them all correct. Mind you question 12 is a trap for skeptics or any one with half a brain. I feel most scientists would feel water vapour may be the more logical choice as an answer to this question.
A thought
Why not peddle powered charging of batteries in these communities? Solar is expensive, difficult to maintain and useless when you have rain or cloudy days
Cheers John

Matt S.
I agree with your point. In my first comment I wrote:

“What ever the solution is it must work, it must be affordable, it shouldn’t break easily, it must be repairable, the parts available, and it must not make anything else worse.”

It’s my analysis that the use of draft animals, as useful as that work has always been to rural populations, can’t raise these people up out of “energy subsistence” – if that is your goal. It can make their subsistence easier, but cannot fundamentally change the situation for the 3.9 Billion people that Pielke the Younger discussed on his blog last year.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/11/against-modern-energy-access.html
W^3

This was an interesting thread.
Where there is enough social disorder, nothing will work. If in Lesotho there are truckers safely and economically bringing in coal, and citizens safely bringing the stuff home and using it, then it’s likely that at least something truly local will work: pedal-powered auto alternators in the home; roof-mounted solar, and so on. If the people of Lesotho can maintain the trucks, then they can maintain the electrical generating units.

Willis:
I haven’t read all the comments so I apologize if someone already mentioned this.
Lighting and television are two technologies that have seen a major increase in power efficiency over the last few years. With LED lights and LCD TV’s (backlit by LED’s) that car battery should last much longer these days than it would 5 years ago.
On another note: I attended a PINC (People, Ideas, Nature, Creativity) conference in the Netherlands back in 2006. One of the presenters worked at a software development company in India. The company was situated in a walled compound surrounded by a poverty stricken community. He had the idea of putting a window in the security wall with an internet connected computer behind it. The mouse and keyboard for the computer were located on a shelf outside the window.
With no guidance or intervention from the company, young kids outside the wall, who had never seen a computer before, taught themselves to use the computer and became quite expert within a few months. They developed their own culture regarding fair usage times, knowledge transfer, etc.

w.w.wygart,
“It’s my analysis that the use of draft animals, as useful as that work has always been to rural populations, can’t raise these people up out of “energy subsistence” – if that is your goal.”
Why not, that is ultimately the start of how western civilization got up out of “energy subsistence”?
In fact Willis’ whole argument is that you can’t just drop modern energy tech on the communities in question and expect it to make a lasting difference. The whole effort will fall apart with the first component that fails.
The rest of the world didn’t get out from under subsistence living over night, it took centuries to happen. To expect to raise these remote communities out of subsistence living without taking an incremental approach over several generations is magical thinking.

Could I add to the automotive alternator suggestions:
1) Claw pole alternators of this type are very inefficient – I have two 3hp Briggs & Stratton engines, one drives a 1kw 230v AC permanent magnet alternator quite happily. The other a home brew 12V charging set using a 35A Lucas (UK) car alternator. This will just about manage to provide the full output, which only equates to some 500 watts, and gets VERY hot under full load.
2) The normal arrangement is to have 6 high power diodes (3 negative & 3 positive) which provide the DC output. There will be a further 3 smaller positive diodes which provide the excitation current for the rotor (field circuit). Some older units don’t have these, and rely on a positive supply from the vehicle wiring, via the ignition switch. In either case the voltage regulation is done by switching the rotor circuit on and off rapidly, varying the “On” time in proportion to the load. Those familiar with some older diesel tractors and motor boats may have noticed alternator triggered tachometers “hunting” when the battery is fully charged, and no lights etc are running. This shows the field circuit switching off completely for a second or two until the voltage drops again.
3) Willis’s idea of using step up / step down transformers has some merit, BUT as pointed out here, the frequency will be well above normal mains, so readily available equipment won’t be any use. The alternator speed would need to be kept constant and suitably designed transformers made to suit. Furthermore there would also need to be 2 wires running back from the remote diode pack / load / battery to the alternator to provide a feedback of the resulting DC output, in order to tell the regulator what to do. Since all 9 diodes are normally in this pack you would STILL have to arrange the DC supply for the field circuit back at the alternator itself. You could, alternatively, run these two wires direct to the rotor brushes, having relocated the entire diode pack & regulator, but there would now be voltage drop problems to contend with. Most of the car alternators I’ve tinkered with draw 3-5 amps for the field circuit, and reducing this will drop the overall output, precisely the situation you’re trying to avoid.
4) In any situation where you’re trying to quickly re-charge heavily discharged batteries the standard fixed voltage regulator is far from ideal. Even a small voltage drop between the alternator and the battery reduces the charge current, as virtually all modern units employ machine sensing. This is why multi-stage external regulators are normally used in marine applications, to a) provide a more controlled charge, and b) to compensate for any volt drop in the cables when batteries are some distance from the engine.
5) One more problem with using small engines to make a cheap charging set (like the one I mentioned) – If you connect the battery up and then start the engine it will likely struggle to accelerate from idle, because as soon as the alternator reaches cut in speed it will present a huge load. My simple way round this was to rig up a side light bulb in the field circuit for initial start up, once the engine was warmed and brought up to full speed a switch bypassed the bulb giving full output. I later improved this with a custom made variable regulator, so the voltage, and hence the load could be varied from about 10 volts up to 15. I also rigged that up with battery sensing to compensate for the leads and crocodile clips used to connect the battery.

IME – do-gooders do more harm than good for most people. I do think your heart is in the right place, but why not just leave those people alone to find their own solutions; they might surprise you! [E = Estimation]

This is very similar to an approach that I have been working on for about five years now. In my case this would be used in both developed and non-developed countries, with a percentage of the profits from the developed countries funding the distribution of the system to non-developed countries.
In light of the IPCC and, in the U.S., the EPA and White House mandates to kill the use of coal, and eventually any other fossil-fuel energy sources, my design does not burn anything. This design could use the assets in place at shut down coal plants to continue producing energy in a totally non emmision fashion. The process used does not require water for operation or cooling. As there are no emmisions, there is no need for expensive air quality controls. Making use of the existing generator head, control room and distribution system would also make this system extremely economical as these things would not have to be replicated elsewhere. Once all of the existing coal plants are converted we could then start converting each of the other fuel sourced plants until every power plant runs on this system. This design is soeconomical it would even remove the need for solar, wind and even nuclear as an option.
In non-developed countries container sized installations could be used to provide electricity, refridgeration for medicine and food and also charging for cell phones and more. You could also provide stoves to cook on eliminating the need for cook fires. Set the container in a central location next to a community house or pavilion, then a small distribution network could bring lights to individual houses or tents. Some of the electricity could also provide water movement for agricultural or sanitation purposes.
Units could also be built small enough for single remote houses and still provide everything needed for lights, cooking and small water usage.
More information on this project can be found at togetherwecanfixthis.com and at gofundme.com/355kkk or by email johnd.murray at yahoo.

Matt S.
You are, again, completely correct in your thinking. I am also correct in my thinking. The variance is that you seem content to help make these remote village peoples’ iron age lives more comfortable and secure but don’t see beyond that. I want to offer them an out of the iron age, even the up-river ones, if they want it – some don’t. Maybe all they really want is a smart phone.
I’ve been there too, been their guest, eaten their food all of that. Nice people, when they feel safe with you, but I don’t romanticize tribal life, that’s the childhood of Humanity. We are now on the threshold of adulthood – adolescence has been a bitch. There are things worth remembering from our tribal pasts, things that keep our social relationships, and some of the more primitive portions of our psychologies on an even keel, but there are also a bunch of things worth forgetting.
Uncle Terrence offered the idea years ago that eventually our technologies would become small enough and immersive enough that we’d all go back to the jungle wearing nothing but our digital appliances like a string of beads around our necks. So maybe all these people have to do is just hang out on the fringes long enough that someone will come along from the outside world and hand them a necklace.
Take care,
W^3

MattS says:
September 30, 2013 at 9:22 pm
….You are wrong. What I see is that if you try to advance them too far too fast the end result will be to make their lives worse not better.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I agree with you. The technology needs to be locally made and locally repairable. ‘Westerners’ have spent 60 years imposing their technology on Africa usually with rotten results. A good example of the type of stepping stone needed is discussed at Leucaena leucocephala collection of links.
Only after people have a stable society that is not ‘Nasty, Brutal and Short’ are they ready for education and a higher level of technology. Theft, dictatorships and wars are one of the biggest problems facing the ordinary people in third world countries. (Description of Rhodesian Bush War with many links from an extremist site. )