Sustainable Design Update

Locally Manufactured Solar LED Light

We at SDU are involved designing new appropriate technologies and creating businesses for people who live on less than $2.00 per day.  (Check out our nonprofit: The Appropriate Technology Collaborative)  We have had some great success and we have a long list of important technologies under evaluation for our design teams in the new year.

ATC cool technologies on the boards:

1.  The “big dumb” stirling engine.  (check out stirling engines here)  Right now stirling engine design is focused on making the most efficient engine possible – understandable considering the stirling engine has a theoretical maximum efficiency that is much greater than the internal combustion engine.  People like Dean Kamen have made small and beautiful engines but they require extremely accurate milling and construction and thus they end up being too expensive for most developing world applications.  Our approach is to make a stirling engine that can generate 1 – 2 horse power using concentrated solar energy for under $100.00.  About half a billion small scale farmers could use such an engine to irrigate their crops.  This simple machine will triple the output of small farms and lift families out of poverty forever.  So far our stirling engine design has parts that can be made from plastic.  We are looking to make a very durable engine that can be fixed in the field with simple tools.

2.  A simple nickel iron rechargeable battery.  Edison patented the nickel iron battery in 1903 and even Edison can’t renew a patent for over a century, so the technology is open source and available to everyone.  We like the nickel iron battery for solar applications because they are tolerant of overcharging and they last for up to 50 years.  Most of the components can be found locally in the places where we work so this could become a local industry in many parts of the world.  We hope to make this a component in our modular solar power system.

3.  Our woven windmill is still in development.  We should have a demo up for a gallery showing of Appropriate Technology in January.  The woven windmill uses local weaving skills to create a very efficient turbine.  We will post photos in Jan. when we deliver the prototype.

4.  Biodigesters for people who sort and salvage materials at the dump in Guatemala City.  (Note:  We are also talking with an NGO that supports people who work in several other dumps in Latin America)  This is at the very earliest stages of development but shows great promise in reducing greenhouse gasses while creating better lives for the people who work under the most awful conditions imaginable.

5.  We will continue our design work on the solar/LED lighting systems.  We are looking at reducing costs and making a variety of options available that maintain our modular approach.  The big idea here is to create home energy systems, starting with solar lighting, that can economically expand up to a complete household system.

6.  Our work on an open source treadle pump will enter a new phase when we demonstrate the technology and finish up construction documents + photos + video.

We have started an informal consortium of designers and design programs at universities that focus on providing solutions for very low income people.  While most people find it noble that design faculty choose to spend time working on these difficult and challenging problems, we are finding a lot of push back from universities and colleges.  Future posts will feature the work of these faculty and student teams.  We will cover both the success stories and more importantly the less successful attempts at solving some of the most difficult problems of our time.

We believe that finding sustainable solutions and opportunities for the world’s poorest people can have the greatest impact on people’s lives and on the environment.  Creating solutions that save energy, create jobs, reduce pollution and solve problems for the billions of people who make less than $2.00 per day will do more to make this a planet a better place than any other endeavor.

We are also realists.  The design challenges we are taking on will require thousands of engineering hours.  Fortunately we have a large and growing group of engineers who want to help us solve these and other challenges we face.

Wind Turbines in Minnesota

The intermittent nature of wind presents a challenge we must face as we transition to greater usage of renewable energy.  Xcel Energy has 1.1 gigawatts of wind turbines installed in Minnesota. They hope to triple that amount by 2020.  Xcel, in an effort to increase the efficiency of their wind power systems, and combat the intermittent nature of wind has installed a bank of sodium-sulfur batteries capable of storing 7 megawatt-hours of electricity.  From the article in SciAm:

The energy storage in question—a series of sodium–sulfur batteries from Japan’s NGK Insulators, Ltd.—can store roughly seven megawatt-hours of power, meaning the 20 batteries are capable of delivering roughly one megawatt of electricity almost instantaneously, enough to power 500 average American homes for seven hours. “Over 100 megawatts of this technology [is] deployed throughout the world,” Novachek says. The batteries “store wind at night and they contract with their utility to put out a straight line output from that wind farm every day.”

That removes one of the big hurdles to even broader adoption of wind power: so-called intermittency. In other words, the wind doesn’t always blow when you want it to, a problem Texas faced earlier this year when a drop in wind generation forced cuts in electricity delivery. But with battery backup, the 11-megawatt wind farm outside Luverne, Minn., can deliver a set amount of electricity at all times, making it more reliable or, in industry terms, base-load generation. Plus, the battery effectively doubles the wind farm’s output at any given moment—both the megawatt being produced by the wind farm itself (that would otherwise have gone to charging the battery) and the megawatt delivered by the battery.

From what I have been able to glean from the interwebs, sodium-sulfur batteries are excellent batteries for storing grid energy.  They are made from inexpensive, abundant materials, have a high energy density and have high efficiency charge/discharge cycles.

-Ben Connor Barrie

Picture via: -Chad Johnson

I just found this over at the MLive Blog.  A very kind post about The Appropriate Technology Collaborative

Here is their post:

Ann Arborite’s new nonprofit off to solid start

Posted by jmcgover December 08, 2008 16:36PM

Remember John Barrie, the Ann Arborite turning from architecture to McGyver-like “appropriate technologies?” (Previous coverage)

Well, Barrie’s been busy since I first met him about a year ago.

He’s been to Guatemala where’s working with like-minded folks to build a new water system for a village of several thousand.

Bright idea Barrie Barrie’s “GaiaLux World Light” is an LED light fixture that uses recycled cell-phone chargers as the power supply.It’s designed as a light source people in squatter citiesand elsewhere who have limited or no power. It’s cheaper, provides better and it healthier than burning kerosene. The version he provided for a photo uses bamboo and an old plastic bag in its construction. The design is free.

His student collaborators at U-M and MSU have made exciting progress on projects like a human-powered pump and solar-powered refrigerator. Intended to keep vaccines from spoiling, the latter will be demo’d in Tanzania in March.

Barrie’s also won some prizes for “appropriate” inventions (think sustainable, based on the resources in the area where the technology will be used).

• A Lindbergh grant for an off-the-grid LED light News readers heard about last year.

• And, with Norbert Muller, a prize from the Barr Foundation and the Cambridge Energy Alliance new energy-efficient, low-cost air conditioner.

Cash from the awards helps run his nonprofit, the Appropriate Technology Collaborative. The awards also enhance its reputation. A seal of approval from the Barr Foundation worth far more than the $30,000 prize, he says.

He goes back to Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan, Guatemala, in February to put together more specs on the water projects. The group Engineers Without Borders has said its members might be able to help.

Before that some of the U-M BLUElab students working with Barrie will take part in an appropriate technologies exhibit in the Duderstadt Media Union’s Gallery on North Campus.

The theme is “Developing Nations, Developing Technologies” and will focus on energy, housing, and water issues which face many communities, highlighting the unique technologies that can overcome them. The exhibit will run Jan. 8-16; 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

More on what’s going on with Barrie and the Appropriate Technology Collaborative as that event gets closer.

6,200 SF Beach House – Cape Cod

Can  a 6,200 square foot house really be sustainable?

That is what ran through my mind while looking over this eye candy.

6,200 square feet.  About triple the the size of the average American home, and nearly 5 times as large as the average in 1970.*   That means a lot more material to build and more space to heat and cool.  Big houses usually have tall rooms so 6,200 square feet usually equates to a much larger volume when compared with the norm.

Here is the description from Trendir:

More than just a modern beach house, this sustainable 6,200 sq.ft., 7 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms design has all the neighbors Green with envy. Its sustainable features make this contemporary cottage-style house all the more appealing. Located in Truro on a plot overlooking Cape Cod Bay and Provincetown, this relaxed beach house designed by ZeroEnergy Design and built by Silvia & Silvia Custom Builders makes Green look good from any angle. “The Energy Star Certified home features a geothermal wall, zero carbon footprint, and a photovoltaic system which allows electricity produced and not consumed, to be pushed back to the grid,” according to Silvia & Silvia. And this design gives back in more ways than one. The interior – furnished with renewable bamboo furniture and featuring expansive walls of windows for natural lighting throughout – is as pleasing to the eye as it is to the environment.

Note:  They claim this house puts energy back into the grid.  From my quick “back of the envelope” calculation, there aren’t enough photovoltaic panels on the roof to cover even a small fraction of the energy this house will consume, except when unoccupied and the Sub Zero refrigerator is turned off.  Also, the PV panels are set flush with a shallow pitch roof.  If the location is Truro, Cape Cod Bay, then the latitude is 42 degrees north, and the proper angle for the solar panels would be about 65 degrees – much steeper than shown.  I would bet the architect didn’t want those “funny looking panels” to show so he set them flush with the roof thereby reducing their efficiency.

In this case I think 6,200 square feet of sustainable home is just too much.

*According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average home size in the United States was 2,330 square feet in 2004, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970.

Via: Trendir

Zulu Man Wearing Adaptive Lenses

Josh Silver ‘s Vision: to help a billion of the world’s poorest see better

Josh Silver, a professor of physics at Oxford University, has created a simple, adjustable and cheap pair of glasses.  With them he hopes to improve the vision of 1 billion of the world’s poorest people.  No small task, but to hear it from Silver, a task he is up to.

For more than two decades Silver has worked on the problem, and now he is at the point where his invention will either become an unprecedented success or a great try that helps out a few people along the way.

I happen to like the style of these Clark Kents, and if made available I’d pick up a few pair as back up to my wire-rims.  I’d like to see a buy-one-give-one program like the BoGo Light.

From the Guardian:

Some 30,000 pairs of his spectacles have already been distributed in 15 countries, but to Silver that is very small beer. Within the next year the now-retired professor and his team plan to launch a trial in India which will, they hope, distribute 1 million pairs of glasses.

The target, within a few years, is 100 million pairs annually. With the global need for basic sight-correction, by his own detailed research, estimated at more than half the world’s population, Silver sees no reason to stop at a billion.

If the scale of his ambition is dazzling, at the heart of his plan is an invention which is engagingly simple.

Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

Via: The Guardian

Photo of Zulu man wearing adaptive glasses. Photograph: Michael Lewis

Oekologie is a blog carnival–kindof like a monthly blog magazine–composed of articles on ecology, evolution, the environment and sustainability. The most recent edition (found here) features the “Biodiesel from Coffee Grounds” from last week as well as several other fascinating articles, including one I wrote for GAP.

-Ben Connor Barrie

Photo via kimberlyfaye