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.
Willis,
Building on Speeds comment:
Speed says:
September 28, 2013 at 3:02 pm
Willis wrote, “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.”
I was sure that the next sentence would be something like, “The cart had a generator driven by a system of belts and pulleys connected to the axle thereby charging the batteries as he travelled along.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And from your article “there are several designs for hydroelectric systems using heavy-duty truck alternators”
Since one form of power that is generally abundant in primitive rural areas is draft animals, have you considered adapting the hydro power idea to us draft animals instead of hydro.
There are a number of designs going all the way back to medieval times for using either large wooden wheels or treadmill like devices to convert animal or even human power to usable mechanical power. Such systems should be locally buildable in the areas of concern and could be located right with the battery charging station to eliminate long distance transmission issues.
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.
People under 30 living in the UK today don’t know what it was like. I remember it wasn’t uncommon back in the early 1970s to hear some people had outside toilets. In 1971 just over 10% of people had outside toilets. People just don’t appreciate the great strides that have been made and the benefits of fossil fuels. They’ve never had it so good. It is this I suspect that injects them with guilt and they wish to ‘undevelop’ the UK.
Other lifestyle changes since 1971.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21698533
Willis
Agree with you on this. The thousands of wind generators in Africa that are not working are a testament to “helicopter assistance”. When you started doing this solar panels were very expensive, today they are super cheap commodities. Car batteries are everywhere can can be recharged by solar panels in the manner that you state. One of the ways to make this work is to provide the solar panels and chargers to the village elders for the distributed method and just the solar panels with the right output voltage for the individuals users. They will figure out how to obtain batteries and chargers.
Just a little solar goes a long way in that part of the world.
Matt,
“Since one form of power that is generally abundant in primitive rural areas is draft animals…”
Draft animals, their fodder and their operators are fairly valuable resources in the societies that rely on them for work. They are generally used only for the most important tasks. Take one away from farming, hauling goods, turning an olive press or whatever – generating wealth – and there may not be one left to do those important things. The developed world moved away from animal power for a reason, not the least of which it was more humane for the animals.
Where I live we have a bunch of nutty-crunchy “Pedal People” trying to make a green go of collecting your trash and recyclables for you by bicycle and hauling it to the dump for you. Vast supply of nutty-crunchy people in my area to strap into pedals, but I shake my head at the waste of human potential – college educated people turning themselves into draft animals voluntarily. Hitler did this involuntarily and we called it a crime against humanity, now we seen to think its a wonderful idea, turning high quality organic produce into motor fuel – ridiculous. None of these people seem to realize this is exactly what they have done.
We need solutions that can take 3.9 billion people out of “fuel subsistence”. Bumped up against numbers like these, the latest generation of ultra-supercritical coal fired boiler technology, as a generational bridge to the next better thing, starts to look humane if natural gas or Thorium is unavailable.
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.
Jimbo says:
September 29, 2013 at 10:52 am
In my design of the PowerHouse for the Solomon Islands, I included an old Lister diesel generator. They’re still making them, in India. The old Lister two-cylider units, the ones with the big flywheel on the side, have an endearing quality—they will run on raw coconut oil.
Having said that, it’s only economical on outer islands, or in situations like during the revolt in Bougainville you mentioned. Once the coconut oil gets to the main cities, it’s worth more than diesel. It’s only in the villages, where diesel is more expensive and coconut oil is less expensive, that it’s cheaper than diesel.
w.
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.
From that yes, but are we (you and I) assuming too much about their actual needs for home heating? Example: What latitude and at what altitude will the house be at? Does it have doors and windows at all? Would mosquito nettings be more important more of the year than doors, windows, or floor radiant heating?
The advantage of “the economy” driving purchases rather than you, I, or the IPCC or the new york based and thoroughly corrupt UN or their even-more corrupt local country or regional government is that the local user knows what he or she wants for their own house.
Unfortunately also, what the local “wants” is also too often tonight’s “drink and sex and AK-47 reload”, rather than next winter’s heat and next year’s night lights next year’s clean water.
w.w.wygart says:
September 29, 2013 at 11:55 am
Yeah, it’s my own invention, the First Law of Village Development.
If there is a system already in place, then the best thing is to co-opt it in some sense, and build on it. Don’t oppose it, work with it.
Indeed, that’s an issue. Since the system has never actually been built, I don’t know the answer as to whether it will pay capital costs. If it were my business, I guarantee I could make it pay if the market were even halfway there. Obviously, it won’t work everywhere, and if the folks don’t feel they need electricity, more power to them. In that case I’d set up a cell-phone charging station.
Again, one of the strengths of the plan is that it is very incremental. You can have whatever you might be able to afford in the way of batteries.
Indeed, all of those are important.
Fortunately, you don’t have to have an entire setup to figure that out. You can start with a couple of panels and a couple of batteries. You don’t need a container or anything more than that. Do that for starters at some school, and see where it leads. If it doesn’t pay, it doesn’t stay.
Batteries full of 12-v electricity is usable for so many things, from lighting to communications to arc welding. I’ve seen wedding receptions going on after dark, lit by nothing more than car batteries and strings of lights.
If you said that to someone in the third world, their jaws would drop to the floor. Students are not coddled in the developing world. Frequently they are expected to work, and work hard, for the schools. Most schools have gardens and kitchens … and the students are expected to work in the gardens and kitchens. Plus there’s usually no such position as “janitor”, the kids do the sweeping and cleaning.
Finally, for them, the chance to first learn to work in an actual business, and then if you are interested to learn to run that business is an educational opportunity beyond compare. Remember that in developing countries, unless your family is in business, it will often be a deep mystery to your children.
If your claim is that education is bad because somehow it might take kids out of the village, I fear I don’t know what to say to that. Don’t educate kids? Not up for that one.
Particularly since electricity generally is of benefit to the economic situation, for a host of reasons. I lived off the grid for some years, and electricity from the sun was all I had. I learned among other things just how important that is, and how much real work can be gotten out of a 24-volt system.
I would not call it a “stop-gap”. It is an educational program, designed to give people the skills and abilities needed to provide and maintain an electrical system. Whenever they may get grid electricity, that will be an advantage.
Since the students will be deeply involved in the business, being taught how to do the books and price the services and such, that will help because of the transparency. And the excess money going to the school? Most schools in the developing world are flat broke all the time, so the money will be more than welcome.
I don’t care if it’s open-access or closed-access. I don’t care if the profits go to the school or are siphoned off by the Principal. Oh, those are real issues, and as you point out they’re worth addressing. But to me, the important questions are,
1. Are the kids learning to operate and run the systems and maintain the batteries, and also (for those interested) learning to operate and run the business?
2. Are the people getting electricity?
If the answers to those questions are “yes”, then the rest is gravy …
Thanks for a number of interesting comments,
w.
Willis’ s idea is obviously well thought out, but it seems to me he’s been looking at the problem from the wrong direction.
Various readers have stories of how, in their youth, their families used expensive batteries to listen to an hour or two of radio each day. Clearly, no one anywhere is doing that now. Modern radios require far less power, and hand-cranked models are available.
Willis records that the most important uses for electricity were said to be lighting and television. As others have noted, hand-cranked lights are now commonplace and, thanks to the greater efficiency of LED’s, quite effective. Mention has also been made of the hand-cranked laptop – if a laptop can be powered in this way, why not a television? There is increasingly little difference between the devices in any case.
My point is not necessarily to use hand-cranks on everything, but rather that if electricity is only used for lighting and commications, (mobile phones included), then rather than physical work, then the amount of power needed is quite small, and getting steadily the smaller as technology improves.
So rather than inventing ways to get more power to remote places, it makes more sense to make more devices that don’t need external power.
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 …
What about Bill Gates?? Have you tried his charity organization(s)?? THorium: small, regional, portable power stations. With start up power provided by your batteries. Plug and play charging trucks, roving around, etc. BTW— You might like ‘Long Way Down’ on NEtflix a travel blog through Africa from top to bottom on motorbikes– Ewan McGregor of Ob1-kenobe fame.
Dear Willis
It was great to read your very interesting contribution about energy issues in Lesotho. I have worked there on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project from 1988 until 2012 when they ‘retired’ me as a member of the ‘Environmental Panel’ originally set up by the World Bank and then sustained by the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA) thereafter until last year.
Economic conditions in Lesotho have improved vastly since I first went there in 1988. The political situation since South Africa became a democracy in 1994 has completely changed the face of Southern Africa. Landlocked Lesotho does find it politially expedient to remain an independent state, although some activists in Lesotho have suggested that it should become a province of South Africa. There seems to be no impediment these days to Basotho citizens finding good employment in South Africa and the old borders of the apartheid years have virtualy disappeared. The border formalities that one encounters these days when travelling into Lesotho and requiring a passport will hopefully be scrapped as useless impediments to democratic freedom of movment in our region.
This once impoverished little British Protectorate actually has lots going for it these days. The water project has secured millions of dollars in royalities every year for what they call the “White Gold” in Lesotho. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project has also paid out many millions of dollars in compensation for communties affected by the Project. This money comes from water consumers in the area served by Rand Water, a huge undertaking that supples clean potable water from taps across a vast area of South Africa and supplies millions of consumers.
Interestingly, and from what I have seen over the years, none of this compensation money has been used to invest in electricity supply! There are plenty of business plans for using the money for other enterprises, like maize grinding mills, schools, taxis and road-building.
Apart from its ‘White Gold” water, that will ensure a perpetually sustainable income from South Africa, Lesotho has recently been pulling big gemstone diamonds out of several mines that are worth millions of dollars on the international diamond market. Big money for Lesotho!
The ‘Muela hydropower plant at the end of the delivery tunnel of the water project has three turbines that can generate around 72 MW, depending on the level of the Katse Dam. This just about used to meet the whole of Lesotho’s summertime demand a couple of years ago. Phase II of the LHWP may double that, and there are also plans for a pumped storage project and some wind farms that may be useful if they are linked to pumped storage. But environmentalists are very uptight about the impact of wind farms on big birds in Lesotho, and as a vulture lover I do share that concern too!
The LEC (Lesotho government electrcity utilty) has been very active in stringing 11 kV overhead lines into rural areas in Lesotho. There is no problem delivering electrcity into rural or urban areas of Lesotho, and the country is linked to the South African grid with a current capacity of around 44 GW. The problem, that many of you have easily identified, is the cost of buying that electricity! It is simply not affordable for resistive loads. So Africans simply have to use biomass or fossil fuel for cooking and space heating. No debate! There are lots of improved biomass stoves on the market – they use less fuel to make more heat and emit less dangerous emissions.
In the remote Lesotho Highlands biomass is used for cooking and heating – this may be woody shrubs that one sees being carried on the backs of donkeys, but all the watercourses in Lesotho support huge quantities of biomass in the form of wood – either from the indigenous Cape Willow that grows prolifically, or from the introduced wilow, Salix babylonica.
For lighting and data (TV, lights and computer) we have PV modules and batteries that do work reliably most of the time. The PV and LED lighting scenarios are getting better every year, and there are plenty of good suppliers of good equipment in this part of the world . Let’s also please not encourage poor rural people to think that they can use failed car batteries to power home PV systems – they can’t!
Willis, you give us so many hours of great intellect and pleasure at WUWT! Please come to visit South Africa some time so that we may extend our thanks and hospitality and make sure you have a good time here on the southern tip of this great continent !
John Ledger says:
September 29, 2013 at 1:59 pm
John, as I mentioned, I’m continually amazed by the range of knowledge that the readers of WUWT provide.
Thank you for your excellent summary and synopsis of the current situation in Lesotho, much appreciated. It sounds like they’re in an unusual situation, with plenty of generation but no one with a regular enough income to become a grid customer.Most countries would be happy to have that problem, and at least they have a ready customer in South Africa so it’s bringing in crucial foreign exchange.
That’s an advantage of going to 12-volt, it’s pay when you can and no electricity when you can’t.
I would love to do that, John, thanks for the invitation. I was there once, during the time of apartheid. I had to get the “South Africa” stamp in my passport on a separate sheet of paper … so I’m greatly interested in how, against all the odds, the country was able to make the transition to the post-apartheid world.
The problem as always is money. I need to figure out a way to make money out of my travels. I became a commercial fisherman to support my ocean addiction, so now I need something to support my travel addiction …
w.
richardbriscoe says:
September 29, 2013 at 1:33 pm
Thanks, Richard. I agree, with one proviso. It’s not either/or. While those are good, when you need to light up the night in any serious manner you need an old auto headlight and a 12 volt battery or two …
So I see your path of greater efficiency, and my path of teaching kids the fundamentals of electricity and business and providing portable power, as complementary ideas rather than in ideas in competition.
w.
UV lights, steam turbines, PDA’s, and lasers. Oh my.
You people are so far from getting it, I want to scream. But that would scare the cats. So I would settle for grabbing you lot by scruff of your necks, dragging you off to one of these rural communities, forcibly dropping you into the dirt, and leaving you there for a year. See what you can make work then.
I don’t even have to leave the US, there are assorted pockets of destitution everywhere. I’ll give you a break, third world working wage of a dollar a day, that’ll free up ten hours a day for experimentation. You find any potential parts laying around from discarded junk and refuse piles, take ’em, and I won’t let you worry about the great disparity between how much they would scavenge and reuse compared to us that makes our trash a rich resource.
How would you do?
For contemplating projects as Willis is doing, I propose the 1973 F100 Standard. That was my first truck, a Ford. Straight six 240 cu.in., carburetor, breaker point ignition, manual brakes, manual steering, manual transmission, rear wheel drive. Simple and reliable. Take one, drive it to a rural community.
That’s it. That’s your source material. Whatever you want, build it from the truck. Start with something simple and easy to maintain, what you make is more likely to be easy to maintain. You want more modern tech? It has to be swappable and at least as reliable, the cost justifiable. Swap LED’s for incandescent bulbs and enjoy the efficiency, if you can guarantee they’ll last 20 years as that’s how long it’ll be for affordable replacements to be available in the village. If they fail, the users can still stick an incandescent in the socket.
Now get it done. Let me know when you’ve finished what is the forging hammer when not driving the metal lathe and is also the arc welder while co-generating hot water for the metal shop, that runs at night and keeps the metal shop lit. Have fun.
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.
You all are missing the point. I read to my son 3-4 nights/week by solar-charged light. It is not a big deal.
The ONE perk of western development we are H3ll bent on delivering, if anything, is this: birth control.
We frame it as bringing “reproductive rights.”
Since most of us educated scientific people believe in free unfettered access to birth control pills and abortion, this does not blip on our radar.
The powers that be do not want more dark-skinned people.
That is the story.
That is why it is so easy to note what “could” work so well, if only someone were willing and smart enough to fund it.
We have thrown millions and millions into foreign aid.
The powers that be don’t wan’t self-sufficient [trimmed].
The powers that be keep YOU in check by keeping YOU as rabid defenders of free birth control and abortion.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled discussion of how simple it is to bring development to the dark world, while ignoring the fact that decades of “effort” have passed and little has been achieved.
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.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Willis idea is workable. That is the main thing. It can work and help people. It needs some devoted, honestly interested people too. Not foundation funds.
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.
Claude Harvey says:
September 28, 2013 at 4:50 pm
I spent my early childhood on a South Georgia farm with no electricity. … powered by batteries, so listening time was strictly rationed to fifteen minutes of world news and thirty minutes of entertainment shows each night after dinner (or “supper” as it was called in rural areas).
Many people in New England, including my family, called it “supper” in the old days. Maybe many still do. As a kid, I never thought there was anything particularly rural about it, but I did think it was inferior.
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.
Willis, you wrote – quote: “The problem as always is money. I need to figure out a way to make money out of my travels. I became a commercial fisherman to support my ocean addiction, so now I need something to support my travel addiction … – w.”
Well why not become a travelling writer and start travelling/writing for a living? I am still waiting for my edition of “THE WORLD – according to Willis Eschenbach”-book… 😉