Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In my last post, “Expensive Energy Kills Poor People” , I spoke of the women of Lesotho. In the comments someone asked what I would recommend that they do regarding electricity.
For me, there are two separate questions about the provision of electricity. One is cities and the grid. The other, and for me, more important question regards the folks living in places the grid may not reach for decades. For example, Steven Mosher pointed me to a quote that says of Lesotho (emphasis mine):
The majority of the population (76%) lives in rural areas, but has strong links to urban centres in both Lesotho and neighbouring South Africa. The majority of these villages lack electricity and the probability of connecting them to grid electricity in the foreseeable future is very low. Grid electricity, being a commercial form of energy, requires users to have a regular income. The income levels in rural areas are generally lower than those in urban areas due to higher unemployment and underemployment levels.
Those are the kind of people who I’ve worked among in the developing world, people way off the grid, the type of people who I met when I was in Lesotho. What can we offer them in the way of electricity, the most adaptable and useful form of energy?
I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours running the numbers on the economics of renewable energy of various kinds in the village. I used to teach the subject to starry-eyed Peace Corps Volunteers. Heck, you know how they say “he wrote the manual” on something? Well … I actually did …
Figure 1. Peace Corp Training Manual T-25. The ERIC Metadata says: This document was prepared as a training manual for people interested in developing appropriate technological approaches to using wind power to pump water. The training program is divided into two basic formats, one in which a session focuses on the design process and participants are expected to do some design work in groups, and another which uses a preselected design and does not include the design process. Besides providing sets of training guidelines and objectives, the manual describes training sessions which deal with: (1) the history of wind systems;2) large projects and community analysis; (3) shop safety and tool care; (4) representative drawings for construction; (5) shafts and bearings; (6) strengths and testing; … etc. etc.
I bring this up to highlight that I’m not an armchair theoretician about these matters, and that I’ve worked extensively in the somewhat arcane field of village-level use of renewable energy. So as you might imagine, I’ve thought long and hard about how to provide inexpensive electricity to the poor.
And curiously, the answer presented itself when I was in Paraguay about thirty years ago. I was there to once again put on the wind-power training that is laid out in my manual above. I was out in the outback with a driver going to look at potential wind-power sites, when I saw someone come out of the selva, the local low forest. He was driving a mule hitched to a cart.
And in the cart were a half-dozen auto batteries. I asked the driver what that was about, and I was surprised by the reply.
He told me that the batteries would be owned by several homes and farms far away from the road. There were no power lines anywhere along the road, of course, we were a long ways from the grid. He said the driver would leave the car batteries there by the side of the road, and a truck going to a nearby sawmill would pick them up. At the sawmill, which also wasn’t on the grid, for a small fee the batteries would be charged from the generator powering the sawmill. Then they underwent the same process in reverse. The truck brought them to the mule track, and the mule man took them back to the farms and ranches. There, they used them for power until they were run down.
Brilliant!, I thought. These jokers aren’t letting a little hardship get in the way of having electricity in their homes.
Later, I was talking to a local schoolteacher in Spanish, she had no English. She said that she’d noticed that the kids from the houses with electricity did better than those from the other homes. I asked what the people used the electricity for. Lighting and television, she said. Television? I asked, mystified, thinking that could only stunt their minds.
Yes, she said, they are the only ones who ever hear about the outside world. They’re the only ones who have a bigger vision, of something beyond the selva.
Dang, I thought. That’s how we can power the hinterlands until the grid arrives.
And over the years, I refined that idea into what I call the PowerHouse School concept. I almost got the agreements and the money to do it in the Solomon Islands, but then the government changed, and the tide went against me. Ah, well, the idea still lives. Here’s the elevator speech:
The PowerHouse School is a ten-foot shipping container that is set up to recharge 12-volt automobile batteries and cell phones, using whatever renewable sources are available locally—solar, small-scale wind, micro-hydro, or some combination of all three. It would be run as a for-profit battery-charging business by a school, with the children being trained in the operation, care, and maintenance of the equipment and the charging and feeding of the batteries. It would also sell (by order only, no stock in hand) a variety of 12- and 24-volt lights, equipment and tools. The older students would also be taught the business side of the operation—keeping the books, maintaining the supplies, figuring the profits and losses. Any excess power would be used by the school itself, for lighting classrooms and powering electronics.
The advantages of the PowerHouse School concept are:
• The education about how to use (and more importantly how to maintain) the technology is provided along with the technology.
• The homeowner is not expected to purchase ($$$) the charging system (solar panels, etc.).
• More importantly, the homeowner is not expected to maintain the charging system.
• Students will be trained to do the business side as well as the technical side , supporting entrepreneurship.
• There is no monthly cost to the homeowner. It’s purely pay-as-you-go. This allows participation by those without regular income.
• It uses existing technology.
• It can be sized appropriately, and increased incrementally (one additional solar panel or storage battery at a time).
Finally, it fulfills my own First Law of Rural Development, which states:
If it doesn’t pay … it doesn’t stay.
In other words, if someone can’t make a profit implementing your whiz-bang idea for improving the lives of the poor, your scheme will go to an early grave.
So that was the plan. Never implemented. The numbers sort of worked in the Solomon Islands, it could have turned a profit … if you were creative about the funding of the capital costs. The problem is that you’re looking at some thousands of US$ to set one up, and that would take a while to pay off. Should be doable, solar panels have a long lifetime, as do schools, and the sun is free. But some combination of a bit of grant funds and perhaps a long-term loan might have to be provided.
Regarding the micro-hydro aspect, there are several designs for hydroelectric systems using heavy-duty truck alternators. These put out about a hundred amps at twelve volts, so that’s about a kilowatt. The only issue is moving that power at 14 volts is a problem because you need a big wire size at low voltage. But in fact, they put out three-phase AC, so all you need is to pop out the rectifier that converts the three-phase AC to DC. Then run the AC into a three-phase transformer, and jack it up as high-voltage as you need, depending on the distance. Run your wires from the transformer to the PowerHouse, where you transform it back down to 14 volts, and then run it through the rectifier you removed from the alternator …
Like I said, I’ve put some thought into the question. That’s the best answer that I’ve come up with about how to provide the benefits of electricity to the hinterlands where the grid won’t arrive for many, many years.
Your comment, suggestions, and criticisms welcome,
w.
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.
Brilliant. My compliments Willis
Where there is need for clean water, may I recommend including UV water purification. Ashok Gadgil developed UVWaterworks at Lawrence Berkeley Lab for ultra low cost water purification in developing countries using a UV lamp over flowing water.
Hi Willis,
One of my friends used to be on the Board of Light Up The World (LUTW).
Please have a look at their technology at http://lutw.org/
[Excerpt]
LUTW designs solar PV systems that respond to the specific energy needs of families in off-grid communities. A simple solar PV system consists of a solar PV module (to generate electricity) connected to a cable (to transport the electricity), a controller (to regulate the Voltage and Current), battery (to store the electricity) and devices (also called loads) such as a light bulb (which convert the electricity into a useful service, light!). The electricity generated from the solar PV module follows the wiring to the charge controller, battery and the devices connected to the system.
The majority of solar PV home systems (SHS) that LUTW designs are 12 Volt Direct Current (DC). These low-voltage systems provide a basic electrification service that includes lighting and communications (i.e. charging cell phones and powering radios) to small rural homes in off-grid communities. The systems are stand-alone, meaning they are not connected to other electrical infrastructure. Each SHS includes a solar PV module, a charge controller, a battery, LED lights, wiring, switches, DC to DC converter and adaptor to connect other devices such as cell phones and radios. Systems are designed to be modular, which means that they can be adapted and changed over time as demand for electricity changes.
[End of Excerpt]
In summary, LUTW use solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and batteries, which makes sense in their remote applications OFF the power grid, but generally makes NO sense ON the power grid (imo).
You may see where I’m going with this. Billions of dollars have been spent on PV systems connected to the power grid, which are essentially worthless (imo).
Provided these PV systems can be salvaged and used, ship them to the third world and use them to power PV-battery systems in remote locations that are off the grid.
Set up a charity to buy the PV systems at salvage prices , because they will be essentially worthless once the ridiculously high government-enforced PV subsidies end – which should happen soon.
Regards, Allan
Several have commented on availability, many others on distribution and supply.
All valid, but the utter corruption INSIDE the tribal, inside-fighting, intra-religion, intra-nation warfare and barbarism dooms charitable offerings to failure at the working level.
“He who has the AK-47 rules. Kills. Steals. Profits from the local corruption of the useless local governments, and profits from the corruption of the UN agencies who send “climate” monies into the continent and who sell the lands riches out.”
In that way, 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 and machine guns. A smaller target (less useful generator) is more likely to stay with the people who need it.
But the economy overall cannot grow until the grid, water, roads, and sewage is available. If the governments ever get moral.
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.
From the article:
“Lighting and television, she said. Television? I asked, mystified, thinking that could only stunt their minds.
Yes, she said, they are the only ones who ever hear about the outside world. They’re the only ones who have a bigger vision, of something beyond the selva.”
Willis is making another important point here. We’re all familiar with the meme: TV causes brain rot.
News flash! TV can also cause NEGATIVE brain rot. How so, you ask? Hundreds of years ago, Paracelsus pointed out the following about the majority of toxic substances that were known at the time:
“The dose makes the poison.”
There’s also an old saying in Chinese herbal lore:
Everything is medicine, and everything is poison.
Paracelsus’ brilliant insight turned out to have much greater range of applicability than he imagined at the time. We should explain that to all of the Zero Tolerance fanatics in our midst.
As Willis pointed out, LOW doses of TV can cause INVERSE brain rot. In some developed countries, teachers recommend that parents limit their children’s TV watching to 1 hour per day. In light of Willis’ and Paracelsus’ observations, this makes perfectly good sense.
*steps off soapbox*
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.
typo: car batteries charged by ….
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.
The advantage of lead-acid batteries is that they are found all over the place for autos. There are better batteries, but the supply chains are not already established. Communal and group ownership of the physical plant is not that uncommon, as in places that have a central solar powered charging facility for all the cell phones. In the US, campers like rechargeable lithium batteries with LED light for reading at night; with a central solar powered charging facility, the owners could carry their camp lights to the charger in the am, and pick them up in the pm. For poor people the outlook is bright (!): production costs are declining consistently.
Similar considerations apply to communally-owned turbines driving automobile alternators, where wind is more reliable or cheaper than sunlight. The idea of off-the-shelf technologies where there are reliable auto shops is appealing.
See http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/28/head-alaska-denali-commission-responds-to-defunding-call/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fpolitics+%28Internal+-+Politics+-+Text%29
Seems we have been spending a lot of tax dollars in the hinterlands of Alaska.
Power plant, oil depot(yikes), and medical clinic for communities as small as 300 inhabitants.
Got to wonder how much could have be done in Lesotho (and elsewhere) for 1.1 billion…
Israel has a charity organization called “Innovation Africa.” They have a number of interesting projects including solar cell phone chargers, which make businesses for local people charging Africans’ cell phones (Africa has more cell phones than the USA does). They could probably help you.
Contact synagogues with a description of your projects and the boys and girls (13 and 12) looking for charity projects might be able to finance quite a few of these things. Christians would love it, too. And so would Muslims, I think, where you want to sent things up in Muslim areas.
I spent 7 years working in Samoa 40 years ago and well understand maintenance needs. If it don’t go its junk. Recently we had a visitor from a college in inland Mumbai and they were going to spend a huge amount to get a 6.5Kw solar cell installation. I did some checking and was surprised how inefficient some alternative choices are. The sort of wind power generator of the scale that can be locally built is good for only a few hundred watts. A small stream can produce a kilowatt AC from a recycled washing machine motor. Solar heat to run a stirling engine can again produce 200w but the technology ramps up. The best was the micro hydro option using the washing machine motors. Solar panel arrays are very inefficient and unreliable as a supply source. Wind is little better.
I like the idea of recycled batteries in a container station. The charging options have to be locally matched with minimum maintenance and electronics and it would be a good project to devise suitable kitsets.
I just finished catching up on some old emails and thought I would share since it is kinda related….. Did ya happen to see this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/us/as-worries-over-the-power-grid-rise-a-drill-will-simulate-a-knockout-blow.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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.
As mentioned by RACookPE1978, it’s all unstable supply until there is a rule of law.
Meanwhile, for the unstable supply, once people understand that there’s nothing magic about generating electricity, they will build generators and turn them using whatever they can scrounge. The essence of what needs to be installed is that understanding and a willingness to try.
If you really must feel that you have to leave them something material, then make that something a simple multimeter. It’s a basic tool for “seeing” electricity without the pain. They cost about $1 to make in China so one per family would not be a huge outlay for an aid programme. But instead of simply handing them out, the recipients must be able to “pass” a training session in the use of the instrument and have some understanding of what the numbers mean.
Repurposed scrap (alternators, engines, washing machine motors, gearboxes, …) from the cities reduces the stress on the cities while entrepreneurs cart off the likely bit back to their “workshop” to tinker.
@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.
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 ?
Haven’t got a reference just now, but there is a bloke out of India who is doing things like this and using the village grandmothers as motivators
Re Another Ian says:
September 28, 2013 at 9:06 pm
A quick look on the googler using “grandmothers + solar + power” produces a string of links, of which this is an example
http://centennial.rockefellerfoundation.org/innovators/profile/barefoot-college
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 .
Light Up The World is still going.
http://lutw.org/
Sorry, missed the link earlier in the thread. Sometimes I start at the end and work up 🙂
From CRS, DrPH on September 28, 2013 at 5:24 pm:
The built-in crank was a loser, an external version was a loser.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1
Hardware specs of earlier versions:
Early crystal radios didn’t even need power. A basic radio takes practically nothing, power with a potato battery or two. For that you can use a crank.
But a laptop?
Keep watching the technology convergence between laptops and cell phones. You’ll see things like rugged iPads with pull-out keyboards that connect by Wi-Fi or cellular that will function as phones. I also expect a pull-out handset for the pocket, basically a cordless phone that only works with the main unit. A compact tough item, everything transportable as one chunk.
In the village, they’ll be cheaply recharged by a woman on a treadle sewing machine who slips the drive belt over to a bicycle generator.
Bulaman says:
September 28, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Thanks, Bulaman. See my comment here.
w.