Capturing Power Of The Sun To Electrify Poor Nations

[RestoreGore]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/capturing-power-of-sun-to-electrify-poor-nations/2007/07/15/1184438147123.html?s_cid=rss_business

Hiawatha Bray, Bridgewater, Massachusetts
July 16, 2007

Page 1 of 2 | Single page
AN American company is betting that the road to success goes through some of the world's poorest countries.

A group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate students has developed a solar energy system that generates electricity, heating, and cooling — using little more than sheet metal and car parts and $US100,000 ($A115,000) in World Bank funding. They hope to turn their invention into a viable business, under the name Promethean Power.

"Can this be a multi-hundreds of millions of dollars company? The potential is there," said Sorin Grama, an immigrant from Romania who has just completed a master's degree in system design and management at MIT.

Mr Grama created Promethean Power's business plan, winning $10,000 in MIT's annual entrepreneurship competition.

The idea behind Promethean Power came from Matthew Orosz, a student who has worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho. Mr Orosz wanted to provide electric power, refrigeration and hot water to people without electricity. He and some MIT colleagues designed a set of mirrors that focus sunlight on tubes filled with coolant. The hot coolant turns to pressurised vapor, which turns a turbine to make electricity. The leftover heat can be used to warm a tank of water and to run a refrigerator, using a gas-absorption process that chills liquid ammonia by first heating it.

Such a system needs pumps and coolant condensers, which may be hard to obtain and maintain in a poor country. But Mr Orosz designed his system to rely on components for cars, which are common even in poor countries. Spare parts are readily available, and so are people with skills to replace things that break.

end of excerpt

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/07/15/BUS_LESOTHO_wideweb__470x237,2.jpg
MIT graduate students work on solar-powered prototypes in Lesotho.
Photo: MIT

[zalinda]

1. This is just so damn great !!!! n/t

[RestoreGore]

4. It is the kind of vision to take us into the future

By not relying on the energy relics of the past.

[silverojo]

2. I'm passionate about solar power

And I think this is a brilliant idea. More power to them!

[Cobalt-60]

3. It's ALL solar power!

Naturally converting incident sunlight is solar.
Fossil fuels come from plants or animals fed by plants powered by sunlight.
Wind and waves would be not moving without the stimulation of the sun.
Even nuclear fuels were cooked up in the heart of another sun.
When anyone suggests its frivolous, remind them that the sun is an unshielded gravitational compression fusion reactor so powerful we have to keep it 93 million miles away.

[lazyriver]

5. Imagine what could be accomplished if our government

put half the money it gives to oil companies into research like this. The nation that finds the next source of energy that will replace petroleum will most likely control the world for many generations to come. There is no good reason why that nation should not be the U.S. but plenty of bad reasons.

[kestrel91316]

19. It's apparently more important that we throw our money away on

the Waronterra(TM).

[progressoid]

6. What the hell? You can harness the power of the sun?

Why aren't we doing more of that?

[phantom power]

7. Because it's expensive. And it only works when the sun is up.

[RestoreGore]

8. Africa has the one blessing of being bathed in sun

And we need to use it to the advantage of the people there who deserve to have energy sources that are CLEAN and SAFE, and actually, solar is getting cheaper and will be cheaper as it becomes more widespread in use. And if you had actually read this piece you would have read how inexpensive what they are doing actually is.

[phantom power]

10. Well, it costs $5,000. How much energy does it produce per dollar?

That article doesn't even say. And I can't even get out my calculator and figure it out, because it doesn't tell me the peak wattage.

I can see the utility of this kind of system for providing Africans with power, who essentially have none now. I think that one genuine advantage of solar and wind is that you can deploy it with smaller up-front capitalization. This particular system makes sense, with the design for easy replacement parts, repair, etc.

The question of how to eventually provide Africans with something approaching a Western standard of living is a very very different question. To provide people with energy on that scale, the numbers don't work out well for solar. It's more expensive per unit of energy delivered than nuclear.

Claims about costs of renewables in the future are completely unconvincing to me. You can make any claim about the future. It's unfalsifiable. I can claim that in 5 years, somebody will invent Mr. Fusion, and we'll power our entire civilization with old beer cans. Just like Marty McFly. It's the future! Anything can happen!

We can't discuss energy policy that way. It doesn't go anywhere.

[RestoreGore]

11. When you take in the risks to health and safety, nuclear is more expensive in the longrun

[phantom power]

13. Yes, you keep saying that, completely impervious to the data that show otherwise.

[RestoreGore]

14. You can bet your ass I will.

[jpak]

12. It *currently* costs $5000 but as the OP states...

<snip>

Yet each would produce enough power to run a small business, such as a grocery store or restaurant. Aside from electricity to run lights, the chemical refrigerator could be used to preserve food, and the leftover heat would deliver hot water.

<snip>

A gas or diesel powered generator large enough (and reliable enough) to run a small business would cost that much in up-front and fuel costs.

And would need fuel and maintenance year after year.

This thing is a bargain...

[RestoreGore]

15. yes, talk about being impervious to the data...

This isn't only a bargain, it is a lifesaver.

[phantom power]

16. Speaking of that:

The machinery inside the prototypes uses more energy than they presently produce. So Mr Orosz is bench-testing pumps and condensers from a host of automotive suppliers. He's looking for a combination of components that will produce enough surplus energy to make the system pay.

So, this isn't even a real system yet. And I mean that thermodynamically, not economically. He hasn't even demonstrated a system that produces net energy. (even when the sun is shining). So any claims about cost are essentially vapor. He doesn't have a working design, much less a manufacturing cost.

Christ on a pogo stick. I shouldn't even have wasted my time.

[One_Life_To_Give]

17. When you don't have anything, each watt is precious.

If you lived without light other than firelight or oil lamps. Electric light is a really good thing. And when you have always had to haul water from the well/stream. Running water in the house is an absolute marvel. This device may be very good in such areas but is not something you will see in conjunction with indoor toilets.

[RestoreGore]

23. Well, you don't know that

I happen to have faith in the innovations and visions of others, especially when times call for it.

[One_Life_To_Give]

24. And you know what about global product support of high tech devices?

There are reasons why certain technology choices are made for different areas and conditions around the globe. You don't compromise a design for ease of replacement parts when FedEx can have anything you might need in 24hrs. This is a solution for people who don't currently have any electricity and refridgeration. Which is not the kind of place you will find indoor plumbing and flush toilets.

[RestoreGore]

26. And what do you know about it?

http://www.africasanitation.co.za/

And who said anything about "flush" toilets?

[Dogmudgeon]

27. This is the problem with Faith-Based policy

Faith is Fantasy.

The world does not reward or punish faith. It does what it wants and responds only to reality. Just because we've been lucky enough to have a few Norman Borlaugs and Bandar al-Sauds does not guarantee us success.

I have faith in our human abilities, but I have NO faith in our institutions and organizations. Until we can get trillions of dollars of infrastructure-based energy into the developing nations at substantially lower cost, their peoples are going to suffer in ways we can't even imagine. The world without energy will be like Darfur multiplied by a hundred thousand.

If you have ever NOT known where your next meal was coming from, you have had a taste of it. But just a taste.

There will be no magic solution. If we don't build the vision, it remains an hallucination.

--p!

[RestoreGore]

28. Oh please, "faith based policy"

Does everything have to be coined in in some BS political phrase? I'm not talking about anything more than in believing in the ingenuity of good people. And for your information that is what has taken us this far. You don't wish to beleive in that or anything but black and white phrases, go ahead.

[Dogmudgeon]

29. Pot, Kettle, Black.

Your self-righteousness is as thick as your posts are thin. I should have known better than to try to write something that made sense.

--p!
JesusAl said it -- I believe it -- That settles it

[kestrel91316]

22. You are making a big assumption here:

".....The question of how to eventually provide Africans with something approaching a Western standard of living is a very very different question......"

A) It is not physically possible for everyone on the planet to have a Western lifestyle. Takes several planets' worth of resources, and we only have this one.

B) The Western lifestyle is greedy and socially irresponsible and completely unsustainable. None of us will have it at some point in the future.

Now WHY were you poo-poohing this wonderful development???

[jpak]

9. More than 1.3 million homes in the developing world have PV systems

They are inexpensive, declining in price, and often acquired through microloans.

...and, they use batteries to store energy for the evening hours...

[One_Life_To_Give]

25. Check out "Wards Solar Cabin" to see what it's like

The website www.otherpower.com/wardsolar.html
gives some of the details on this little off the grid home. Granted this guy uses propane for refrigeration and cooking. But it shouldn't be too difficult to imagine doing without refrigeration and cooking can be done in other ways.

[kestrel91316]

20. Funny, that. I don't use much electricity at night.......I sleep.

[phantom power]

21. I see. So, you disconnect your main breaker when the sun sets each night?

That would be an interesting experiment, wouldn't it?

[kestrel91316]

18. Things like this give me hope, at least for the undeveloped world.

Sadly, Americans would probably rather die than go back to living in reduced circumstances.........

[losthills]

30. This is a credible model for the future.

We have lived through an interesting and exciting time in human history. But our lifestyle was unsustainable, and we have learned that it was actually destroying the planet we live on.

In a sane future, we will learn to be in harmony with nature, we will work to bring less developed nations out of bone crushing poverty, and we will give up many of our own unsustainable excesses.

The Leave It To Beaver era is over, and the sooner we learn to accept that and move on, the better off we all will be...