Photo taken this afternoon. On the final countdown of a fundraising campaign on IndieGoGo! Almost at $25,000. Join the crowd of supporters to help make energy access happen for communities across Kenya.
In the video is fellow permaculture student, Victor Monroy from the L’Esperance Orphanage in Rwanda.
Do we live on sunlight or do we live on fossilised sunlight?
The more I learn about renewable energy, the more I realise it’s not that complicated. I feel I’ve spent far too long getting lost in the politics and economics of it in the UK while sitting on my hands doing nothing. In the UK, the challenge is not technical, it’s more societal, political and navigating the mazes of legislation.
Today, on the permaculture course, the content was familiar. In the morning we talked about energy - the concepts, the types, the current situation, and how it links with permaculture. This was facilitated by my colleague Sam. It was interesting to get reactions from people about our project (access:energy) and to take a different perspective on what we are doing.
In the afternoon we made rocket stoves. These are relatively easy to build. All you need is some clay, dirt, water and a banana stem. There’s a guide on the access:energy website right here if you’re interested. And photos from the session are here on Facebook.
Please support and share access:energy’s campaign to train Kenyans to build more wind turbines. This is exciting. Check out the campaign here: www.indiegogo.com/accessenergy
A short video I put together yesterday in the workshop. We are testing a wind turbine made exclusively from readily available components that can be found across East Africa, as explained by my colleague Allan from access:energy.
Macynlleth and back.
I’m cruising back to London on the train from mid-Wales, where I’ve been on a quick round-trip to visit friends in Cardiff and Macynlleth, home of the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT). Lots of deep green, drizzle and wind turbines are whizzing past out of the window, and I’m feeling recharged from my trip, like a deep cycle battery.
I haven’t been to CAT for years. They have some good displays there, but for me, the real experience is finding out what’s going on behind the scenes. First stop was a really informative chat with a chap called Toby, who was manning the information desk. I had been recommended his expertise from friends, and he didn’t disappoint. We chatted wind, hydro and PV, and he showed me some of the PV-tracking experiments that were going on – that were exploring the potential for mirrors (also known as ridge concentrators) to boost output. Some of these ideas are outlined in this paper by Poulek. It could be interesting to explore this some more for their applicability and potential in the East Africa context.
He pointed me to the useful PV-GIS website where we looked up the additional benefits of tracking on a single axis – seems to be up to 35% in East Africa which is good! It feels tracking has good potential if there is space and a simple tracker is easy to manufacture, otherwise, why not just invest in one extra PV panel, and have them fixed in place? Then you don’t have to worry about the tracking going wrong – because if it does, then you will have even less generation than a static panel.
As for the mirrors and their potential to further boost generation, the effect of increased temperature on the panels needs to be considered, since the efficiency of generation is reduced by increased surface temperature, but this relationship depends on the type of panels. All very interesting stuff to investigate.
Next, I met up with an old friend Suneil, who showed me to his office where he is working on a 3D-printer (info here). This is an open-source project, involving a worldwide community for developers. He showed me how he is using the wonderful Arduino chips to control the axis and plastic extrusion. Lots of potential here for enabling localized production of affordable components for engineers. We also talked about the potential for quick fabrication of cheap wind turbine blades and other components using this system, and some of the open source turbine projects going on.
All in all, a good trip. CAT is an inspiring place, and doing some really important work. The people I met were full of ideas, enthusiasm and were very welcoming, and very lucky to be in such beautiful surroundings.
More photos over at Flickr.
