Afromusing

This picture was taken by Adriankoto, who writes on the blog Harinjaka [Malagasy]. He is the founder FOKO madagascar initiative which has been active in planting trees particularly in rural madagascar. More on his awesome work here[English].

PS: I know i haven’t been blogged about solar energy for awhile, doesn’t mean i have lost my mojo, I am just re-charging. ha!

This bag looks very nice. Its like the BMW/mac book Air of solar bags; beautiful, but just a tad out of reach for this blogger, as it is definitely quite expensive. Doesn’t hurt to gawk a bit though…

You can view more bags here.
Hat tip whiteafrican!
PS: My thoughts are with Kenya as always…the GV special coverage page for Kenya is back up.
Amnesty International is appealing for action today to protest Human rights violations in Kenya. You can find more information and details on how to participate.

Its been a minute since i did one of these, well here goes:
There is lots happening in the Renewable energy (RE) field in Africa. From various sources, here are a few hits that have crossed my virtual desk.
From AfriWea,
Ethiopia
Can you set up a 120MW wind power plant? If so, the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPC) wants you. Interested companies can submit their proposals before Feb. 4th 2008. Please see attached PDF for the information.

An exhaustive article about wind power in South Africa, click on this cool graphic.

Blurb:

What is becoming more and more apparent is that there is a unique opportunity for the growth of a serious renewable-energy industry in South Africa, given growing security of demand and a desire to reduce the country’s carbon footprint. But what is also plain is that unless government and Eskom take an active role in its promotion, the full potential for renewables will not be realised.

Kenya
From Business Daily Africa:
Wind Energy driving Rural Growth
The article also includes a picture of Simon Mwacharo, the owner of craftskills, TEDster, and friend of the blog.
Blurb:

Simon Mwacharo knows one or two things about moving under the feet of the big boys and girls to be the first on the cash till. While KenGen is scheming in the boardroom on how to meet the rising demand for electricity, Mwacharo is on the ground, providing hundreds of homes with electricity generated from the wind.

Mozambique:
June this year, i used the pun ‘emPowering’ in this post, glad to know that i am not the only corny one: From Off-Grid. net comes a neat post ‘emPowering Africa’

Mozambique University has launched a local program to encourage renewable energy self sufficiency that may become a model across the continent.

From Newscientist: Solar water purifier distributed by Rotary international.

The solar water purifier collects heat from sunlight and uses it to evaporate unpurified water running through the panel. The vapour collects inside the glass forming the panel’s surface and is collected - leaving behind most impurities

hat tip Emeka
Update: Cant believe i almost forgot about this video. William Kamkwamba was featured on WSJ!

end of brief roundup.

Solar Accessories:
Here is a link to a not so flattering post about the solar charger Solio (take it with a grain of salt) I haven’t tried Solio, but mysoldius worked really well for me.

So i finally bought a voltaic backpack. I was worried about traveling with it, especially when going through airport security. The screeners were fascinated about it, asking lots of questions. Joel Johnson of BoingBoing gadgets had mentioned that he had no problems traveling with it - My experience was the same. No issues at all, actually its a great conversation starter.
Initial envy from the geeks at my friend’s office in Kenya - Very High!

Via Digg

*Vid is abit grainy but not too bad, there is another one here.
This team is on a mission to showcase solutions to global warming…by driving a solar taxi. They are currently in India, where they spoke with the chairman of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Mr. Rajendra Pachauri. Incase you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, IPCC were co winners of the Nobel Peace prize with Al Gore. The Solar Taxi team will be making their way to the United Nations conference on Climate Change next month in Bali Dec 3rd - 14th. How about a stop in Africa sometime in the future? They could even attend the Zero Africa Rally
Cool stuff.

I came across this solar powered LED lamp via worldchanging author, product designer Jeremy Faludi. It definitely has an interesting design…wondering why the weird shape? Pictures from his site speak louder than words. First, 3 words “Usable form factor”.

Would be interested in your thoughts on this product. Would you use it? Do you like the design? Is it practical?

What follows are some tangentially related thoughts, just so I am clear, I am not attributing what follows below to the above product. Just thinking through the idea of design ‘for Africa’.

One of the things that came up during a spirited discussion of the solar powered computer and the OLPC laptop many moons ago, was the question of relevant  products, and  whether these products that are labeled ‘for Africa’ smack of designing down. Maitha asked (in swahili) Don’t Africans deserve products made of high quality - in reference to the OLPC that is currently available for purchase. Granted at the time, maitha was looking at the bulky nature of linux for the OLPC, and the product was still being designed (with myriad challenges to overcome). I have not gotten my hands on and XO but when i do, i would like to revisit some of the issues raised. Particularly (perhaps i am simplifying, but) is the OLPC a good quality product that is relevant for African children? Atanu Dey of Deeshaa.org looked at the OLPC in context of education in India (I need to reacquaint myself with his arguments…I had been following the OLPC dev, then sorta lost track somewhere).
Wired had a profile of the OLPC designer Yves Behar, which I am rereading now, I just recall that he did do some nifty things to get OLPC to be what it is today.So, please chime in with your examples of products you think smack of ‘designing down’ and those that you think are ‘just right’.

My entries for the ‘just right’ category are
- mysoldius solar charger for mobile phone and IPOD (blogged about here)
- Bogo solar flashlight (blogged about here)
These are based on positive feedback from my dear uncle who absolutely finds function and convenience in using the above products.
 
 

Via Carbon Copy
Capetown is using solar powered traffic lights to buttress it from expected power cuts. As Rory points out, its a great start to making solar power more commonplace. I would love to see pictures of the traffic lights…this is a blatant hint to our South African friends at WebAddicts. Implementation of solar tech such as this makes so much sense, here’s hoping more countries see the example and follow suit. Just imagine a whole street in (_______insert African country of your choice) with solar powered streetlights. Warms your heart yeah?

In case you have not heard, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala has been appointed as managing director of the world bank! For brevity’s sake, i will just say that her appointment is laudable, in part because it signals a new direction for the world bank and how it views developing countries. Please watch the talk she gave at TED Global in Arusha to see how she tied together the issues of aid, trade and African self-determinism. I hope she will be given a chance to reshape the terms of world bank’s relationship to the developing world in a way that is beneficial to Africa, and continues to shape Africa’s next chapter “A healthy, smiling, beautiful Africa”.

Speaking of the world bank and its policies in Africa, according to the Guardian, the world bank is accused of razing congo forests, thereby endangering the pygmies. I feel a bit bad using the word pygmy, because they have names that I would much rather use such as ‘The Lega’. Several years ago i went to the Nelson Atkins museum in Kansas city for an exhibition named ‘The Art of the Lega’. It was an eye opener for me because the explanations for the pieces gave me a glimpse into their society. One of the tenets i remember was the idea of peace as a fabric of society; the Lega people have a pacifist culture which was expressed in the way they chose to fashion tools - with smooth edges, eschewing sharp points. Since that exhibition and when reading stories about the Congo war and its adverse effects on the people there, I wonder if we need to rethink how we address a community that we know little about other than their stature. Stepping back to the story about the world bank making recommendations to the DRC govt about industrial logging being beneficial to the DRC, did anyone listen to the local community about how best the forest can be used to truly benefit people?

For more on Art of the Lega, the companion book to the exhibition is available on Amazon.

Via Leonardo Energy,
The Wind Turbine buyers guide [PDF]: “The article discusses small wind system components, wind turbine basics, and understanding the ratings. It also shows photos of the small wind turbines and lists several specifications for each.”

Via AfriWea
GVEP International receives a 2 million pound grant for a project in East Africa. GVEP’s role is, according to their site

… providing financial support, capacity building and technical assistance to energy SMEs in developing countries. Using funding from the Russian Government, GVEP intends to set up two Regional Funds in West and East Africa to build local energy supply chains and grow economic development from the bottom up.

The list of other organizations in Africa receiving grants from Europe aid can be found here. [PDF]. Some of the organizations in Kenya on the list include:
Kenya Arid Land Development Focus - Renewable energy in Wajir
Kenya Tana and Athi rivers Development Authority - Community based mini hydropower development in upper tana river basin
Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) - Up scaling the smaller biogas Plants

Via BBC
“The Greek Orthodox Church in Cyprus has announced plans to invest $234m (£115m) in solar energy. Archbishop Chrysostomos II said the church would build a factory that would make photo-voltaic panels to capture the sun’s energy.” - Now that is a faith based initiative i could get behind.

Fun from The Daily show with Jon Stewart: An awesome lampoon of the Cape Wind project in Nantucket. Big wigs don’t want it because it will presumably ruin their long range view from their mansions.

There are two interesting developments in solar technology I came across awhile ago: The first is a portable solar tracker called Portasol.

The cool thing about this one is that the mechanism for tracking the sun (just like a sunflower would) does not require any power per se. It is thermo-hydraulically powered; click here for Engadget’s explanation of how it works..
Via Make

The second development is not a solid product yet, but researchers from Georgia Tech have designed a solar cell that can generate electricity when light hits the side of the cell, thus increasing efficiency because it still works well in the morning and afternoon when the sun is not hitting the cell directly from the top.

“It may be intuitive: when the light goes straight down, the only interaction is with the tops of towers and the ’streets’ below,” says Jud Ready, senior research engineer at the institute’s Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory. “But at an angle, the light has an opportunity to reflect off the sides of the towers.” When the sun is at a 90-degree angle, the prototype delivers only 3.5 percent efficiency. But it delivers better efficiencies at many other angles and is actually at its peak efficiency–7 percent–when light comes in at a 45-degree angle. That means the device operates at relatively high efficiencies during much of the day and has two efficiency peaks: one before noon, and one after noon.

While those efficiencies are too low for commercialization, Ready is working on optimizing the size and spacing of his towers as well as their chemical composition.

Read more about it on Technology Review.

An added bonus link (Not solar related but cool nonetheless) - Ethan Z on Incremental Ideas, and his piece in the Boston Globe is a must read.

This installation in Chifiri, in North Eastern province Kenya is an example of how wind and solar installations can be used to provide the needs of marginalized communities in arid and semi-arid areas.

Simon Mwacharo, TEDGlobal speaker and renewable energy innovator has written about it in wonderful detail and provided pictures. Read more about it here.

The turbine also provides some power to the nearby manyattas (traditional samburu huts), Simon noticed a Japanese guy camped out near the turbine. That was the only place he could charge his laptop and phone!

Do note that next week, the TEDGlobal talks will premiere on Ted.com. Subscribe in itunes by searching for tedtalks and also check the TED blog for a series of posts from bloggers who attended the conference. A piece i wrote is is alread posted on the TED blog, Like Emily said ‘This is the bloggers story to tell’, because there wasn’t as much coverage of it in the mainstream news. I hope you enjoy the talks.

While at TEDGlobal I met Manuel Toscano, a gentleman who works for Emergency USA. We talked shortly about solar power being a great technology for use in remote areas. He filled me in on a hospital that was designed using the following guiding principles.
-The idea of a “hollow” space and a pavilion-based system;
-The choice of the best possible technology given the context;
-The search for an ethical language for this type of architecture.

The choice of solar power for a hospital in an oil rich country might seem a bit ironic, but there is more to this. The specific details of how the energy produced by the panels is used is particularly interesting.

Solar panel: free healthcare, free energy
The average temperature in the Sudan is 29°C, and in the hottest months it can reach 45°C. In order to cool down the hospital, a number of measures were taken during construction. In addition to this, air conditioners were installed after the building was constructed. In the first case, a series of insulating techniques were used. The external walls for example are 58 cm thick and contain an insulating cavity that prevents the building from heating up. The use of traditional cooling systems would have implied high levels of electrical energy or fossil fuel consumption (the needs in terms of volumes of air to be cooled down are hefty: 28,000 m3). In a country rich in oil resources, EMERGENCY has sought out alternative sources of clean energy: the sun. Nine containers left Italy for Khartoum with 300 solar panels, bringing to the country an almost unknown technology, and one that is very seldom used in Europe. Today a plant that contains 288 solar collecting items (for an equivalent of 900 m2, or the area of 10 houses) produces 3,600 KW- as much as burning 355 kg of gas – without producing one gram of CO2. Each collecting item is made up of a number of copper tubes that contain water; these are themselves placed in insulated glass tubes that allow the water inside the copper tubes to heat up. The water transfers the accumulated heat to an insulated 50 m3 tank that keeps the water between 80-90°C. The heat is then cooled down to 7°C in two “chilling” machines. Solar power thus allows the center to produce cold air without discharging any particles into the atmosphere, and limits the use of electric power to water circulation pumps. Two regular boilers have also been installed in case the solar power is not sufficient to run the two “chilling” machines. The cold water is used to lower the levels of heat in the rooms that need to be chilled for medical or other purposes. The machines used for this last part of the cooling circuit are called UATs (Units of Air Treatment). There are 8, each one designed for a specific area of the hospital (CPR, surgery, administration, etc). The UATs draw air from outside and “force” it into a 7°C tube that cools it down. A second system of tubes subsequently transports the cool air to various hospital rooms according to need.

In short, the surgery center is kept cool using a combination of the water from the Nile and the Solar panels. For more detail on the design guidelines of the salam center please click here [pdf]. (Thank you Manuel).

It is becoming increasingly clear that solar tech is flexible enough to allow for innovation in any field. Another example of solar being especially useful in the medical field is the ‘Hospital in a box’ invention by Dr. Seyi Oyesola, a TED Global Speaker and innovator.

Jason Pontin of TR summarized his invention as

It was a simple, portable (well, 150-pound), resilient set of medical devices that makes surgery possible even in the worst parts of the world. The hospital in a box has anesthetic equipment, a defibrillator, a burn unit, plaster-making tools, surgical tools, and an operating table.

In my post on tales of invention, i noted that the ‘Hospital in a box’ can be charged using a truck battery or a solar panel.

Note: TED fellows Dr. Chikwe Iheakweazu and Dr. Ike Anya from Nigeria started the blog ‘Nigeria Health Watch’ to discuss and bring to the fore health care issues in Nigeria and Africa in general. Do visit them and subscribe to their feed if you are in the medical field and want to be in the loop.

Back to architecture: This ted talk from Cameron Sinclair is very inspiring.