solarray

Solar as a Cottage Industry

2012-01-16T01:12:00.001-05:00

Richard Komp (sunwatt@juno.com) has been building solar cottage industries in Nicaragua, Niger, Peru, Mali, Rwanda, Pakistan, Mexico, Haiti, India, and Mexico for the last few decades. He teaches people how to build small solar electric systems using factory second photovoltaic cells and assembling them into collector arrays themselves.

Here's a video of his 2009 Pakistan project

One of his latest projects is in Colombia (http://www.mainesolar.org/Colombia2011.pdf PDF alert) at the Universitaria de Investigacion y Desarillo (UDi) in Bucaramanga and uses solar to make more solar: solar cookers are used to encapsulate solar electric panels using ethylene-vinyl-acetate (EVA) instead of silicone. The EVA cures at a temperature near the boiling point of water and the students built two solar cookers big enough to fit 65 watt PV modules. 24 students in one week made six 65 watt PV modules and about 8 solar cell phone chargers, besides studying the design of several different PV systems. One of the solar cookers ended up in a restaurant on the beach while the second was used for making PV modules. "There is about $90 worth of materials in each big cooker," writes Komp.

Komp also gave lectures on solar thermal systems, including solar air conditioning, relevant as the UDi is designing a zero energy addition to their campus, a building where all the electricity, hot water, and air conditioning will be 100% solar powered.

"We designed a lithium bromide absorption air conditioner that ran from heat from an array of 150 evacuated solar water heater tubes. The only electricity the air conditioner will need is to run the pumps and fans since the heat furnishes all the energy needed to produce the chilled water, which will be stored in large insulated tanks for use when cooling is need[ed] at night or cloudy days. All the hot water needed (and then some) will be from the waste heat from the air conditioner system. ($100,000+ in costs)"

Part 1 of Richard Komp's 10 part introduction to photovoltaics series.

http://www.mainesolar.org/Komp.html - reports on Richard Komp's various international projects

Richard is not the only person taking factory seconds to the developing world to make local solar devices locally. Here's a BBC story (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15876602) on making solar cell phone and battery chargers in Kenya through Mark Kragh and KnowYourPlanet (http://www.knowyourplanet.com).

Richard is also not the only person using solar to make more solar as this article about an industrial solar furnace for PV manufacture points out
http://inhabitat.com/nrels-new-optical-furnace-bakes-more-efficient-solar-cells-using-50-less-energy/

Some 30 or more years ago, Solarex talked about building a solar breeder facility where the solar panels on the roof would provide the power to make the solar panels inside the factory. Unfortunately, Solarex never completed its project and no longer exists.

There are other cottage industries that can be built around solar besides solar electricity. Solar ovens have been used in African refugee camps for years now, supported by such institutions as German CARE (http://www.care.de/) and the Jewish World Service (http://www.jewishworldwatch.org/donate/solarcookerproject.html)

Here's a video on a solar cooker workshop held in Nyala, Sudan under the auspices of the Darfur Peace and Development Organization.

This video from German CARE is especially close to my heart because it shows a woman in one of the 3 international displaced person camps they run in Easten Chad using a solar oven and a "haybox" or retained heat cooker to prepare a meal.

The haybox is simply an insulated box into which you place a hot pot. The heat has nowhere to go but into the food. You can also use a stone as a heat reservoir: heat the stone, place it in the box with a pot of food, cook. It's an old, old technique updated with solar. I love these ancient solutions to common problems.

In Tanzania, Robert Lange has been working with the Maasai people adapting an efficient cookstove to their local needs (http://www.maasaistovessolar.org). They have established a small factory to produce them using local materials.

"Lange reports that, 'Our particulate and CO monitors show that the stoves cut indoor smoke by 90 percent. They also reduce the amount of wood use by 60 percent, thereby saving 12 to 15 hours a week of wood-gathering for the woman of each household.'

“'We are finding that householders are willing to pay for stoves if they know they will really save time and eliminate the smoke compromising their children’s health. Maasai typically have little cash but they have goats and cows. If they are able to see value in the stoves, they are ready to sell "a goat and a half" to purchase one. Referring to Lange as "Babu”, they affectionately call the stoves “Jiko ya babu” (Grandpa’s stove).'

"'The numbers also show the potential in business stimulation. The final cost for a stove is about $55. Of this, $10.40 goes to the local brick maker; cement and other building materials cost $8.50 at the local supplier; steel for custom parts is purchased for $12 from the Arusha steel merchants; transport of bricks and labor required to form the steel parts come to about $9.00. And the women’s team that makes the stoves in the homes, building them, maintaining them, and training the householder how to uses them, earns $14 per stove to be divided among team members.'"

Animation of stove design http://www.informmotion.biz/Maasai_stove_v2.html

This 5 gallon solar shower design is also ripe for a locally produced solar cottage industry
http://www.greendiary.com/solar-shower-affordable-solution-healthy-life.html

One of the best introductions to the variety of solar solutions being implemented around the world is The Renewable Revolution by Sajed Kamal. Sajed is another person who has been doing solar internationally for a number of decades. He lives in an apartment house in the Fenway neighborhood of Boston and practices what he preaches:

"It inspires me to look at the 46W stand-alone PV system we installed in our home in 1986. Sitting on the south-facing window sill of our fifth floor condominium unit in the Fenway, with the battery box placed inside and under the window, it has been supplying electricity for a room with two 15W fluorescent lights, a table lamp, a small table fan and a record player diligently and reliably, around the year, for over 20 years! All I had to do was to replace the set of two interconnected 6V, deep-cycle batteries twice. The room is also equipped with a variety of solar cookers - both home-made and factory-made - well-used over the years. The PV system also has the capacity to power our 'Tulsa Hybrid' solar cooker that can cook three ways, day and night, year-round: by direct sunlight, being plugged into the regular household current (110VAC), or by solar electricity from the PV system (12VDC converted to 110VAC through an inverter). Last but not least, the battery in our digital camera too, gets recharged by the PV system."

I know Richard Komp, Robert Lange, and Sajed Kamal personally and thus can say that their work is a labor of love, lasting over many years and now decades. Richard and Robert are always looking beyond their own pockets for support in what they do. You can contact them at their respective websites if you care to contribute.

Occupy Green

2011-11-22T00:32:00.003-05:00

This idea may be moot after all the forced evictions of the Occupations from public spaces but I thought I'd share it anyway.

I've visited the Occupations in Wall Street, Boston, and Providence, RI. Every time I go to one of them, I try to connect with somebody about making the Occupation green with, as yet, little success. In New York, I saw the greywater treatment system Mobile Research Labs set up and talked to a couple of people about using some simple solar techniques. In Boston, I've tried to connect the winterization team with the student Energy Clubs at some of the local colleges and universities and alerted my own network of solar enthusiasts to Occupy Boston's efforts. I've also tried to do the same by contacting OWS's Sustainability Group. In Providence, I talked with the only occupier I saw up and around early on a Sunday morning. He was picking up trash around the park and was disappointed that the group hadn't organized themselves enough to do recycling. I gave him my card and my elevator pitch for a green occupation and he said he'd pass it on.

I look at the Occupations and see economic refugee camps and a possible test-bed for emergency response and sustainable economic development around the world. Some may say that's crazy but the links are there if you look.

Occupy Wall Street had the aforementioned greywater treatment system and bike generators in NYC built by Time's Up. In October, Greenpeace brought solar panels to the site (video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZI8WSM7O2w ). There was even a system for carrying compostable "wastes" to community gardens by cargo bike.

In Boston, Revolt Lab designed and built a portable solar charger (more at http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/59128-occupy-wall-street-spawns-diy-solar-power ). Sage Radachowsky built a winterized micro house and brought it to the Occupation.

There is even an effort to Occupy Rooftops on Community Solar Day, November 20, by Solar Mosaic, a group which has been building community solar projects one panel at a time.

All of these are great ideas and a good start but there are many other things that are possible.

How about the 99% expressing solidarity with the Other 90%, the poorest people around the world, by using the solar cooking techniques that has been used in African refugee camps for years:

I especially like this video because it not only shows you how to use (and make) a simple solar cooker but also demonstrates an old slow cooking technique, the hotbox or haybox cooker. This is simply an insulated container into which is placed the a pot of food once it has been heated up to cooking temperature. This is an idea that goes back a long ways into our history and is just as useful today.

Rainwater harvesting is another simple idea that the Occupations could use as access to water has been an issue for most Occupation sites since they started.

Sanitation is an obvious problem that has not been adequately addressed. I wonder if the Drink Pee Drink Pee Drink Pee process where you can pee in a container and "then perform a biochemical reaction that transforms the nutrients in your urine into an immediately usable fertilizer to feed your own plants" might be applicable.

The US military is now making solar and wind powered forward bases. Can some of their technology be adapted by the Occupations? Does Architecture for Humanity and Crisis Commons have any interest in trying out emergency response ideas through the Occupations?

These ideas are only a beginning of what is possible.

----------------

All I know about simple solar is at
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/09/simple-solar-parts-1-2-and-3.html
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/12/simple-solar-parts-4-through-8.html

Trash Technology and Recycled Solar: Plastic Bottles

Trash Technology and Recycled Solar: Plastic Bottles

2011-09-13T22:48:00.007-04:00

Solar water disinfection
http://www.sodis.ch/index_EN
A two liter plastic bottle can be made into a water treatment system simply by filling it with contaminated water and exposing it to the sun. Sodis is an organization that promotes this technology around the world.

The disinfection process can be speeded by turning aluminized mylar snack food bags inside out and making them into reflectors as two young women in Belo Horizonte, Brazil discovered: http://hybridliving.com.au/news/index.php/2008/05/isef-sterilizing-water-with-trash/

Solar bottle bulbs for daylighting
http://www.elliottlemenager.com/2010/06/21/amazing-water-bottle-sky-lights/

In 2002, during a long electrical shortage, at Uberaba, São Paulo, Brasil, Mr Alfredo Moser discovered a way to gather sun light in the house through plastic bottles hanging from the roof. First shown at the Globo Reporter in the 25th May 2007.

Alfredo Moser was pressed by a scarce electricity substitution and found out that he could light his house with a bottle of water filled with water and a protection cap made of camera film.

The bottle is just refracting sunlight very effectively and produces an equivalent light power compared to a 50/60W lamp. In a rainy day, even without much light and direct sun, one still have some light. Scientist have now visited Moser and are looking into ways to take this concept to maximize its potential.

That was 2002. Now over 10,000 households, small businesses, and schools in the Philippines have installed solar bottle bulbs. Iliac Diaz of Liter of Light is attempting to spread it worldwide.
http://isanglitrongliwanag.org/

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2011/0822/Used-soda-bottles-light-up-the-world-for-free

The invention is something that is so simple, cheap, and sustainable that anyone can create and maintain it themselves.

As Diaz says, the three rules of appropriate technology are that people can find it, they can replicate it, and most importantly, they can make a business of it.

Here's another Brazilian design, for a PET bottle hot water heater
http://www.temasactuales.com/temasblog/environmental-protection/waste-recycling/a-solar-water-heater-made-of-pet-bottles/

There are also plastic bottle houses
from Argentina
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-house-of-plastic-bottles.html

and Nigeria
http://nationaldailyngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6798:plastic-bottle-house-now-in-nigeria&catid=111:real-estate-today&Itemid=455

In Nigeria, they fill the bottles with sand or dirt to make bottle bricks.

Here's a backpacker solar water heater
http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Water-Bottle-Heater/

A recycled solar cloche or cold frame for the garden
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2005/03/recycled-solar.html

All these devices make use of the Simple Solar Principles
Dark gets hot
Light reflects
Clear keeps the wind out

Most any and everybody can understand how to build and use them.

Even when a plastic bottle is chopped up, it may still help in purifying water
http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=CNBP_028110&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=83404a1a-b1e0-4304-bd02-54148b96d1ca

“Plastic bottle” solution for arsenic-contaminated water threatening 100 million people
Note to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

DENVER, Aug. 31, 2011
“Dealing with arsenic contamination of drinking water in the developing world requires simple technology based on locally available materials,” said study leader Tsanangurayi Tongesayi, Ph.D., professor of analytical and environmental chemistry at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J. “Our process uses pieces of plastic water, soda pop and other beverage bottles. Coat the pieces with cysteine — that’s an amino acid found in dietary supplements and foods — and stir the plastic in arsenic-contaminated water. This works like a magnet. The cysteine binds up the arsenic. Remove the plastic and you have drinkable water.”

Water bottles walls, hanging bottles in south-facing windows in south-facing windows, is folk technology that goes back at least to the 19th century. Always wanted to set up a stacked thermosyphon from one gallon to five gallon container to another to see how that would affect the system. Has anyone combined solar water disinfection with solar daylighting? How about water collection and treatment with solar daylighting, water and space heating, plus PV power as one integrated system.

Previously:
Trash Technology for Education and Survival
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/31/980477/-Trash-Technology-for-Education-and-Survival
Fastfood Containers as Solar Devices
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/05/20/868401/-Thought-Experiment:Fastfood-Containers-Recycled-into-Solar-Devices?detail=hide&via=blog_563738
Recycled solar
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2005/03/recycled-solar.html
Solar Is Civil Defense
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2008/05/solar-is-civil-defense-illustrated.html
Small-scale LED Lighting, Off-Grid Cell Phones
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/05/small-scale-led-lighting-off-grid-cell.html
Solar Insurgency
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2007/11/solar-insurgency.html
Solar Swadeshi
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2010/12/personal-power-production-solar-from.html
Gandhian Economics
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/forum/topics/notes-from-foundations-of

All I know about simple solar is at
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/09/simple-solar-parts-1-2-and-3.html
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/12/simple-solar-parts-4-through-8.html

Solar PSA: A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector

2011-07-29T13:59:00.000-04:00

Here's my latest Solar PSA on how a south-facing window is already a solar collector:

"Any window that sees direct sunlight is a solar collector. You can learn how to use that free energy to make your home more comfortable and secure. Caulk and seal the window against drafts. Install storm windows on the exterior, interior, or both. Cover the window at night with an insulating curtain to prevent conduction, convection, and radiative heat loss. A valence above the window will stop night-time drafts and reduce condensation. A sunny window can double as a greenhouse for starting seedlings or growing house plants. Expand the solar space below, above, or beside the window with a windowbox solar air or water heater. You can even design a living system to provide fresh vegetables and fish year round while producing space heat, cleaning the air, and reducing waste. A south-facing window is already a solar collector. Learn how to use it."

I made the following four 30 second public service announcements for public access TV around 1991. They served as intro and outro to the videos of the Boston Area Solar Energy Association lectures (http://www.basea.org) I shot and cablecast on Cambridge Community TV (http://www.cctvcambridge.org/) for a few years. The tape archive of all those lectures needs to be digitized.

I made the following four 30 second public service announcements for public access TV around 1991. They served as intro and outro to the videos of the Boston Area Solar Energy Association lectures I shot and cablecast on Cambridge Community TV for a few years. There is still a tape archive of all those talks by national and world class energy experts that could be digitized if anyone was interested.

30 seconds of solar history (based on the book A Golden Thread by John Perlin and Ken Butti and independent research) along with modern, working examples, often hidden in plain sight.

Energy sources broken down by btu (though I'm not quite sure my math is correct).

These two trick questions were collaborations with the polymathic Ed Hill.

I made another set of 15 second spots back in the late 1970s and early 1980s for the Urban Solar Energy Association, the precursor of BASEA which hosted workshops and solar barnraisings as well as monthly lectures and talks. Those PSAs went to the local TV stations and, if memory serves, two channels ran them at least once. There may even be a 2 inch tape somewhere in my archives. That was the first south-facing window is already a solar collector PSA. The others were "A south-facing porch can be a sunspace or greenhouse. Learn how to use it at the Urban Solar Energy Association.

Recently, I put all I know about Simple Solar online in eight video installments that add up to about a half hour.
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/09/simple-solar-parts-1-2-and-3.html
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/12/simple-solar-parts-4-through-8.html
Al Gore is doing 24 hours of Climate Reality on Current TV on September 14. I wonder how many minutes will be devoted to solutions rather than describing the problem and persuading the unconvinced. An inconvenient truth about "An Inconvenient Truth" is that it was very light in the solutions department.

I say Solar IS Civil Defense. At least that level of solar is affordable, available, and practical today whatever Climate Reality you inhabit.

DIY Climate Change: Ongoing Global Brainstorm

2011-02-21T12:31:00.003-05:00

Since it seems that we can't expect too much out of the international or national policymakers for the next couple of years, I've been thinking that the next logical step for 350.org and the climate movement is to do it ourselves. That could take the form of an ongoing global brainstorm on local, practical solutions where people who are working on projects can report their successes and failures, trade ideas on what works and what doesn't, and help us all climb the learning curve faster as well as replicate successes quickly and modify them appropriately for different local conditions.

There are a number of people already thinking and working along these lines (appropedia, globalswadeshi, the coalition of the willing, global system for sustainable development...*) but they are dispersed, not networked, and there is no central nexus you can point people to. This is something that needs to be done in order to make do it yourself climate change happen. If done right, it would eliminate a lot of unnecessary duplication around the world and could build a community of practitioners that could be brought to bear on specific areas and problems like an Emergency Rescue Squad or ecological SWAT team.

Last year, when the Haitian earthquake happened, there were crisis camps set up in response all around the world. Pecha-kuchas, short design talks using only 20 slides with only 20 seconds allowed for each slide, devoted to helping Haiti occurred on one night in cities on almost every continent. Resources were brought to bear in an ad hoc way that are currently being institutionalized. It seemed to me that people had begun to learn from the experience of the Asian tsunami, New Orleans and Katrina, and now Haiti how to respond in a way that was more effective. I think the same kind of thing could happen with the long emergency of climate, especially if it were focused on building security and developing a better standard of living.

The other day, I ran into Thomas Goreau who has publish the first of a set of books on innovative technologies for small island developing states. His field of primary interest is the coral reefs and he told me he is going to Panama to work with some islanders there on a solar project. Now I know why I went into that supermarket even though I didn't buy anything. A handbook or encyclopedia of appropriate technologies in printed and electronic form could be distributed and updated by the users as they build their own indigenous projects. The same day, Robert Lange ( http://www.the-icsee.org/projects/africa/maasaioftanzania.htm ) who has been working in Tanzania with the Maasai developing a more efficient cookstove and building solar LED lighting systems emailed me about getting his new stove design tested. I've been trying to put him in contact with Richard Komp ( http://www.mainesolar.org/Komp.html ) who's been doing solar as a cottage industry, seeding small solar businesses around the world for the last 20 or so years. The point is that there is so much expertise and so many different people working, mostly in isolation, on the same problems. Lots and lots of things are happening on the local and regional level that never reach the outside world. We need to link all of it together and reveal for ourselves a new infrastructure of development and economics that is hidden because it is disconnected and unrecognized.

I've seen this in the local agriculture field. When we started direct marketing here in MA back in the mid-1970s, there were only 12 or 18 farmers' markets. Now there are over 140 and bids to make some of them year-round. In the 1990s, I tried to get the local ag folks to start mapping the economic system that had grown up around those efforts but they weren't interested. It was only a year or so ago that Boston's Sustainable Business Network started doing that and went on to hold a huge event by the Children's Museum, a local food festival that was more successful than they'd dreamed of. It was packed, all day, and everyone had a great time. I think the same dynamic is happening with local responses to climate change and I think one of the next steps will be recognizing that fact. I just hope it doesn't take 30 years.

The 10/10/10 world-wide climate work day was great as was the international art day that happened in November. Both need to keep happening. Add the linking and networking on practical, local solutions and responses and we can start a parade that the politicians will be running to get at the head of, as they always do.

I've sent this idea to Bill McKibben and 350.org They are interested in the concept.

DIY Climate Change: Ain't Nobody Else
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/23/922941/-DIY-Climate-Change:Aint-Nobody-Else

* Appropedia http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia
Globalswadeshi http://globalswadeshi.ning.com/
Coalition of the Willing http://cotw.cc/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Willing
Global System for Sustainable Development http://gssd.mit.edu/GSSD/GSSDen.nsf

Personal Power Production: Solar from Civil Defense to Swadeshi

2010-12-30T23:25:00.001-05:00

US and NATO forces have distributed more than 700,000 solar/dynamo am/fm/sw radios in Afghanistan since before our invasion of 2001 and that a simple modification to that solar/dynamo adds battery charging capabilities to each of them (circuit diagram at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/12/195518/177 ).

US AID is distributing 250,000 solar/dynamo radios in Sudan over the next few years. Again, those solar/dynamos can not now charge extra AA or other size batteries although with a connection to a battery bay from the cell phone charger output they certainly could. The combination of a few square inches of solar electric, photovoltaic, PV power with a hand-crank or pedal power generator provides a modicum of electric power day or night, by sunlight or muscle power. It also allows battery switching, charging one set of batteries while using another. This is practical personal power production and the technology is deployed in the field in Afghanistan and Sudan or available off the shelf right now for $30 from LL Bean and many others, if you are willing to do a little tinkering.

The same technology is also a Solar Civil Defense.

Flashlight, cell phone, radio, and extra set of batteries all can be powered with a couple of square inches of solar electricity (PV) panel. It is also what we are supposed to have on hand in case of a blizzard or hurricane, emergency or disaster. Add a hand crank or pedal power generator and you have reliable production of AA and larger battery electrical power.

This level of survival solar power is a significant rise in the standard of living for the 1.6 to 1.8 billion people in the world who do not now have access to electricity, too. Civil defense preparedness here in the US could be linked to providing services to the poorest of the global poor. I am talking with a Cambridge, MA group which includes city officers and officials about the possibility of promoting Solar IS Civil Defense locally through a buy one, give one exchange with a sister city in the developing world, possibly with Bogolight (http://www.bogolight.com) or Light Haiti Project ( http://lighthaiti.org/donations.html ).

In addition, this combination of small scale solar and human power is an example of swadeshi, local production or self production, a core principle of Gandhian economics:
"Swadeshi is that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote."
Speeches and Writings of M. K. Gandhi, 1919 ( http://members.tripod.com/~anusandhan/articles/article1.html )

Gandhi would spin thread for an hour each day, usually producing a hundred yards for weaving into cloth, and helped develop a simple spinning wheel (charkha) that allowed many to do the same. He believed that spinning was the foundation of non-violence and that khadi cloth was a means to the local production of economic independence. Gandhi was a middle-aged man when he first asked his wife Kasturba to teach him to use the spinning wheel. Once he had mastered the wheel, he practiced spinning every day for the rest of his life. Home-spinning became a symbol for independence and self-reliance throughout India under his encouragement and direction and a market began in cottage industry and home produced cloth, khadi.

Gandhi used the charkha, the spinning wheel. Today there is an e-charkha available, developed by RS Hiremath ( http://www.flexitron.diytrade.com/sdp/194986/4/pd-699352/5454575-0/e-charkha.html ):

"...spinning on the two-spindle e-charkha for two hours will produce 2,400 meters of yarn and provide a light output for 7.5 hours. According to the innovator, the LED light is of the latest type and has an extremely long life of at least 35 years. The generator in the e-charkha is also custom designed for this application and is of the three-phase AC version with no brushes, which makes it last for over three and a half decades. Hiremath has sold over 1,800 e-charkhas till date, the biggest consumer lot residing in Rajasthan and Gujarat. He says, “The response till now has been overwhelming. Most users are delighted with the prospect of a charkha generating them money and electricity.... The e-charkha, which weighs around 10 to 12 kgs, has two models—a two-spindle one and an eight-spindle one. The universal retrofit kit that can be easily attached to the shaft of any charkha is priced at Rs 1,500, while the two-spindle e-charkha costs Rs 4,500 and the eight-spindle one Rs 11,000. The innovator has applied for a patent for the retrofit kit, which consists of a three-phase AC generator, lead acid battery and intermediate control circuits for charge and discharge. It is currently manufactured at a facility in Bangalore and is mostly produced by disabled employees. The product is currently being marketed by Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), Mumbai."
http://www.dare.co.in/people/featured-innovation/e-charkha.htm

One humanpower is about one sixth horsepower. A healthy person can produce 100 watts of power for hours on end and 300 watts in a sprint.

Returning to Afghanistan, there is the example of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Badshah Khan, who practiced Gandhian non-violence and raised the world's first non-violent army, over 100,000 strong, of Pashtun and other peoples, Muslim, Sikh, and HIndu, in the very areas where the Taliban is now active in Pakistan. They were the Khudai Khidmatgar, the Servants of God, the Red Shirts, who based their non-violence on the Islamic principle of sadr, patience, and the Pashtun custom of melmastia, hospitality. Badshah Khan was educated in a madrassa as well as a missionary school. He began building his own schools in 1910, educating both boys and girls, and formed the Khudai Khidmatgar a decade or so later. That group lasted until 1947 when it was disbanded, forcibly, by the new nation of Pakistan. I wonder if the Taliban learned anything from him.

Could we do with electricity what Gandhi did with cloth, at least for emergencies and disasters? Can hand-made electricity, 21st century khadi cloth, provide real electrical power to the people and a survival level of energy independence and autonomy?

Solar IS Civil Defense, Illustrated http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/12/195518/177
Solar Swadeshi http://solarray.blogspot.com/2005/05/solar-swadeshi-hand-made-electricity.html
Afghanistan Solar http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/27/0353/85056
Solar Tactics in Afghanistan http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/26/01854/3246
Low Level Leverage Points in Afghanistan http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/4/810944/-Low-Level-Leverage-Points-in-Afghanistan
Solar Insurgency http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/8/0317/01605
Solar IS Civil Defense http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/30/142018/700
Islamic Satyagraha Army http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/27/23370/2751

Climate Collaboration Contest

2010-10-12T22:28:00.001-04:00

To members of the Climate CoLab community,

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Climate CoLab contest, as well as a major upgrade of our software platform.

The contest will address the question: What international climate agreements should the world community make?

The first round runs through October 31 and the final round through November 26.

In early December, the United Nations and U.S. Congress will be briefed on the winning entries.

We are raising funds in the hope of being able to pay travel expenses for one representative from each winning team to attend one or both of these briefings.

We invite you to form teams and enter the contest--learn more at http://climatecolab.org.

We also encourage you to fill out your profiles and add a picture, so that members of the community can get to know each other.

And please inform anyone you believe might be interested about the contest.

I voted for the 350 alternative, the closest this simulation can get to zero emissions, and entered a zero emissions scenario in the last iteration of Climate Collab. The new program is more detailed than the last but there is still a lot of work to do. Your participation can help make this tool more useful.

cross posted to http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/11/909327/-Climate-Collaboration-Contest

How to Change US Energy in One Growing Season

2010-06-07T23:47:00.001-04:00

1. Consistently demonstrate practical, affordable energy efficiency and renewable energy ideas, devices, and systems at the over 4000 weekly farmers' markets that take place across the USA from Memorial Day to Halloween or Thanksgiving.

The people who attend farmers' markets are a core constituency for green technology and practical applications that save money, energy, and resources. They are likely to be early adopters who can spread those possibilities into the community. I've done energy demos at my local farmers' market and know that a renewable energy company sometimes participates in the year-long weekly market near Providence, RI. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more examples out there.

Do energy education weekly at as many of those 4000 weekly markets as possible and over one growing season energy use and attitudes would change significantly. See Mr Franklin's Folks for one vision of how this might work.

Cambridge, MA has been doing monthly weatherization barnraisings since the summer of 2008. Since then, at least 18 other nearby and distant communities have begun their own weatherization parties. Still other groups are doing solar barnraisings in at least four states, that I know of:
Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative in NH
Seacoast Area Renewable Energy Initiative in the Piscataqua region on Maine and NH
Coop Power in Western MA
Grid Alternatives in CA

During the last energy crisis in the 1970s, there were groups that did solar barnraisings too. Some of those solar devices are still working.

Personally, I'd like to see a weatherization barnraising on the White House. With the full participation of all the TV carpentry shows, "This Old House," "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," the HGTV and DIY channels.... It could make for some great PSAs and instructional audio/video and the power of the President's bully pulpit (plus a little of his own sweat equity) would go a long way toward generating the mass movement toward energy efficiency that we should have undertaken thirty years ago.

3. Energy education could also work in conjunction with emergency preparedness and civil defense. Start with the basics - flashlight, cell phone, radio, an extra set of batteries.... all of which can be powered with a couple of square inches of PV. Add a hand crank or pedal power back up and you have reliable production of AA and better electricity day or night, by sunlight or muscle power.

Solar IS Civil Defense, pure and simple.

It is also a significant rise in the standard of living for the 1.6 or so billion people in this world who don't have access to electricity today.

In fact, there are organizations where you can join a buy one give one program and support coordinated development in the developing world with civil defense in the developed world.

4. 350.org's next event is an international climate change work day on 10/10/10. If groups going to farmers' markets weekly and doing monthly energy barnraisings monthly organize with that October 10 in mind, that event could make an even bigger splash and larger impression on the general public.

Weekly energy demos at farmers' markets and monthly energy barnraisings could also continue after that one single international work day so that the work continues and we all change the way we use energy, from wasteful and polluting to efficient and clean.

5. Build an information network so that different groups working on these issues around the world can share experiences and speed innovation.

I'd like to see an online solutions architecture established to make good energy ideas go viral. There are already some sites which are useful resources:
Appropedia
Open E Farm
BuildItSolar
Solar Cooking Archive

It is way past time for the changes we need. We shouldn't wait for politicians or business to change. We should start making the changes we need ourselves. Begin the parade and there will be plenty of "leaders" ready to run to the front of the line.

Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous behaviors that will avoid extinction.
R. Buckminster Fuller

We remain alert so as not to get run down, but it turns out you only have to hop a few feet to one side and the whole huge machinery rolls by, not seeing you at all.
Lew Welch

The only war is the war against imagination.
The only war is the war against imagination.
The only war is the war against imagination....

the war that matters is the war against the imagination
all other wars are subsumed in it.

Diane di Prima

Zero Net Energy House Winner Is Positive Net Energy House

2010-05-18T23:23:00.002-04:00

At the NESEA Building Energy Conference in March, the winner of the MA Zero Net Energy House contest was announced. It is the Stephens/Clarke Residence in Montague, MA which was built by Bick Corsa. The 1152 square foot, 3 bedroom house cost $180,000, was monitored from January 1, 2009 to January 1, 2010, and produced two and a half times the energy it consumed. This Zero Net Energy House is actually a Positive Net Energy House.

The house is highly insulated, with R42 walls, R100 ceiling, and stands on an R30 insulated slab. It is powered by 4.94 kW of solar electric panels, solar air and hot water heaters, and passive solar heat gained through U-.17 windows (about R 5.8, according to my calculations). There is a mini-split air source heat pump serving as a furnace and demand hot water heaters as back-up in case it's needed.

The house used 1,959 kilowatts for the entire year with an annual energy bill for heating, cooling, hot water, cooking, appliances, and lighting of $392. They sold 2,933 kilowatt hours worth $586 back to the grid over that same period.

Tina Clarke, a Transitions Town trainer, and her husband, Doug Stephens, moved into their new home in December 2008 and will be using it in conjunction with Greenfield Community College and Franklin Regional Technical High School to educate builders and students in green jobs and green building techniques. Information about these courses can be found at http://www.gcc.mass.edu/media/docs/cg/community_ed.pdf"

In an interview with the Springfield Republican, builder Bick Corsa said the things that are most successful at lowering utility bills in a new home are tried-and-true design techniques.

“People tend to go for glamorous high-tech gadgets. There is nothing wrong with that stuff, but I tell people to go with the things that pay for themselves. A superinsulated shell for the house; put your money into that. It has no maintenance and it will save you on your heating,” he said.

Also, homes that have lots of windows that face toward the sun, called passive solar heating, will reduce heating bills. In this region, facing to the southwest gets you the most sun exposure.

“Those two things together – superinsulation and passive solar heating – are by far the most effective ways to have a really low-energy house. They are simple things that do their job year after year,” Corsa said....

These are also techniques that can be adapted to existing housing as well.

Case Studies of Zero Net Energy Houses and Deep Energy Retrofits
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=eoeeaterminal&L=4&L0=Home&L1=Energy%2C+Utilities+%26+Clean+Technologies&L2=Energy+Efficiency&L3=Zero+Net+Energy+Buildings+(ZNEB)&sid=Eoeea&b=terminalcontent&f=doer_Zero_Net_Energy_Buildings_Case_Studies&csid=Eoeea

Zero Energy Intelligence
http://www.zeroenergyintelligence.com/blogspagehtm/?p=1284

Boston Herald article on the Stephens/Clarke residence
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/view.bg?articleid=1238366

Solar IS Civil Defense

cross posted to bluemassgroup.com, dailykos.com, eurotrib.com, globalswadeshi.net, and greenmassgroup

How to Heal the World

2010-04-08T19:13:00.002-04:00

It was probably around thirty years ago that I went to a basement apartment near Harvard Square for a presentation by two people visiting from Auroville, a religious community and ecovillage near Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, India. The man and woman talked about their work planting trees and reforesting the area. They showed slides, focusing on a method they derived by trial and error to provide water for their saplings by molding bunds, small catchment basins just downslope from the tree to gather rainwater so that it could soak down into the roots. They talked about following erosion gullies upslope to where they began and using stones and pebbles to stop the erosion at the source. They said that after more than a decade of work, the weather had noticeably changed in the region and the seasonal rains had returned.

How did we get into this mess?
A little bit at a time and because everybody does it.
We get out of it just
that same way.
4/23/01 John Berry, in conversation

I think about this as I plant my garden. I remember John Chapman, Johnny Appleseed; Jean Giono's story of Elzéard Bouffier, "The Man Who Planted Trees;" John Todd's vision to restore the devastated mountains of Appalachia. I think about ecological design instead of geoengineering, the small seeds planted and tended over time with modesty and patience rather than the heroic technology of global scale for immediate results and long-term unintended consequences.

One of my favorite videos is this short piece on Greening the Desert, a permaculture installation in Jordan near the Dead Sea. It reaffirms my faith in the idea that "You Can Fix All the World's Problems in a Garden."

Greening the Desert Follow-Up, Six Years After the Funding Ran Out

"The Man Who Planted Trees" is Jean Giono's allegorical story of a shepherd who plants a forest. It is beautifully written and, unfortunately, fiction. You can read it in English and en Français or watch the Academy Award winning animation.

John Todd's Ecological Design for Appalachia won the first Buckminster Fuller Design Challenge. He proposes using biological waste treatment to clean up coal slurry and tree planting and biomass production to restore the landscape and provide jobs.

One Man Creates a Forest in India shows that what Giono imagined can happen in reality. Abdul Karim is a living Elzéard Bouffier.

Auroville is still planting trees and you can help build their Sadhana Forest.

There is also the Green Belt Movement in Africa founded by Wangari Maathai.

Trees for the Future promotes tree planting all around the world.

Arbor Day varies from state to state but usually happens in April.

crossposted to dailykos.com, eurotrib.com, globalswadeshi.net, bluemassgroup.com, and greenmassgroup.com

Old Solar: 1881

2010-02-09T23:45:00.004-05:00

Edward Sylvester Morse patented his air heater in 1881. It is still a great design with a versatile vent system.

A simple glazed box on the south wall with a dark absorber, an air space, and two sets of vents at top and bottom, to the outside air and the inside of the house, this is a basic air heater that can be modified for wall or window.

Edward Sylvester Morse built at least three of these. One was at the Peabody Museum in Salem, MA and used an iron absorber panel. The second had a slate absorber and was on his own home, also in Salem. The last was at the Boston Athenaeum. He also lectured on the topic at MIT and published a pamphlet on his solar air heater findings.

ES Morse was a remarkable gentleman. Not only did he teach at the Essex Institute in Salem, MA but he lived and taught in Japan and traveled to China. His book, _Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings_, is still in print and a great primer on traditional Japanese culture. He was a president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and wrote wonderful reports on topics as diverse as noise pollution, archaeology, and natural science. I especially enjoyed "Fireflies Flashing in Unison."

SolarWall is a modern adaptation of Morse's idea. It is an unglazed perforated absorber. A fan draws outside air through the absorber and into the heated space. It gets up to 75% thermal efficiency they say.

Solarwall uses the air flow pattern shown in the leftmost illustration of Morse's patent. The TAP (Thermosiphon Air Panel) is an example of the middle illustration, cycling room air past the absorber in a closed loop, full heating mode. The third illustration shows an air chimney from the floor of the room to the top of the absorber, a cooling technique.

I'd like to see a Morse collector with modern materials, PV fan assist, and controls that monitor and maximize the vent system. Could be interesting.

Old Solar: Eames Solar Do-Nothing Machine

Old Solar: 1980 Barnraised Solar AIr Heater

Old Solar: Keck and Keck Twentieth Century Modern Old Solar: Venetian Vernacular
More on simple solar devices:
A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector

Simple Solar - Parts 4 through 8

2009-12-10T20:53:00.002-05:00

From My Basic Solar Advice:

First, reduce your load. Insulate, caulk, seal everything you can. Weatherize everything up the wazoo, even going so far as to get a blower door test - pressurizing your house with a large fan installed in the front door and having a professional go around finding where all the air leaks are. Get the most efficient appliances (refrigerators tend to be the largest electrical load in the house) and lights that you can find and afford and install them. When you've become as efficient and energy-conserving as you can be, then start thinking about solar.

Then, and only then, go solar.

This is my solar backpack. It has three solar lighting systems on it which I use for my lights when riding my bicycle at night. I've been using it for four or five years now, hasn't failed me yet, and cost a little over $60 to put together. Dirty F*ck*ng Solar Hippie Backpack

Minimal solar lights and flashlights, solar is civil defense, and an affordable way to ease into the renewable future. After all, Solar Is Civil Defense

Solar and dynamo power for reliable sources of low voltage DC power: light, radio, cell phone, and anything that uses a battery. The combination of small scale solar and a hand cranked or foot pedaled dynamo provides a reliable source of low voltage DC electricity, day or night, by sunlight or muscle power. It is one method to bring useful amounts of electricity to the quarter of the world's population that does not now have access and a good idea to have on hand in the industrialized world in case of emergency and disaster.

Here's the summation of my 30 years of playing with sunlight and demonstrating simple solar devices for a couple hundred thousand of people throughout the Northeast. This short clip reviews all the devices and techniques I presented in the rest of this series.

Simple Solar - Parts 1, 2, and 3

2009-09-09T13:10:00.004-04:00

I presented a workshop on Simple Solar at the Boston Skill Share on a windy Sunday, April 19, outside the Stata Center at MIT. Werner and Julie of Videosphere recorded me and I finally got around to doing a rough edit of the first part, the simplest solar devices that anyone can make to disinfect and heat water and cook food.

It's six and a half minutes long, I have the sniffles and say "All right?" a lot but the rest of the information is good. After all, solar heating is remarkably simple:
dark heats up
light reflects
clear keeps out the wind

Boiling water and cooking with the Simple Solar principles and using the basic geometry of the parabolic curve to focus light in a line and a circle with a parabolic trough and parabolic dish.

The late Tim Harkness made the parabolic dish used in the video on that windy April day. There is a Tim Harkness Fund for Invention at Hampshire College which awards grants for innovative work in applied design and invention, especially in areas of sustainability and renewable energy. Students and alumni from the Five Colleges are eligible.

How to Draw a Parabola

Draw a Parabola with pencil and string

Simple solar windowbox air heater for supplemental heating of a single room. This device uses a solar electric fan assist and can be built full scale (2 feet x 4 feet) for about $100 worth of materials.

More on the Windowbox Solar Air Heater

More on simple solar devices:
A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector
Your Southernmost Window
Solar IS Civil Defense
Solar IS Civil Defense, Illustrated

Earlier Diaries:
Old Solar: 1980 Barnraised Solar Air Heater
Old Solar: Keck and Keck Twentieth Century Modern
Old Solar: Venetian Vernacular
Old Solar: 1881

Under-Utilized Installed Solar Capacity in Afghanistan

2009-07-06T01:32:00.003-04:00

By my count, over 700,000 solar/dynamo radios have been distributed throughout Afghanistan by US and NATO forces. As built, they charge only the dedicated, internal, hardwired radio batteries. With an easy modification, they could charge standard size rechargeable batteries. Then people could always charge an extra set of batteries. They would have a reliable source of low voltage DC power, day or night, by sunlight or muscle power. Through battery switching, charging one set of batteries while using another, they could power LED lights, cell phones, tape and CD players, walkie-talkies, possibly even computers.

Some of our soldiers know how to do these modifications. Are the people of Afghanistan doing them too?

The radios were distributed as part of a psychological warfare program, to bring news of the invasion and the intentions of the coalition forces to the people. You can read more about that program here or here.

Not only the military is interested in this idea of solar/dynamo battery charging. I have had a couple of commercial solar/dynamos modified for my own use and below is a circuit diagram for the battery charging modification Richard Komp of ME Solar Energy Association drew for me.

The solar/dynamo battery charger is a key part of my personal Solar Civil Defense, providing power for the flashlight, radio, cell phone, and extra set of batteries we all should have on hand in case of emergency.

I believe that such devices can be used as a solar swadeshi, a modern adaptation of Gandhi's spinning wheel. In fact, Gandhi's spinning wheel has been adapted to electrical generation so that an hour of spinning thread can provide nearly three hours of LED light. This is the e-charkha. You can see the e-charkha in action here.

Some people are even going farther, Taikkun Li has proposed a Tibetan prayer wheel generator and LED lighting system. Given the current economic, political, and ecological situation, there are some days when I feel we really do need electric prayer.

PS: US AID plans to distribute about 250,000 solar/dynamo radios to Sudan over the next five years or so for a nation-building project. These solar/dynamos also charge only the dedicated, internal, hardwired radio batteries.

Small Scale LED Lighting + Off-Grid Cell Phone Charging in Mali

2009-05-20T00:31:00.002-04:00

Matt Berg currently serves as the Information Communications Technology (ICT) Coordinator for the Millennium Villages Project based out of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City and prior to that, was the director of the Geekcorps Mali program in Bamako, Mali.

Inspired by Jan Chipchase, I put together the following photo montage [pdf alert] covering the ever increasing number of cheap Chinese LED lights that are transforming the way people access lighting. There are a lot of amazing NGOs doing work to address the issue of rural household lighting but I think they are at best a fill-gap to an existing market gap. The mass market solution (LED + small rechargeable battery + 1 W solar panel) that will really make a difference will be Chinese and at a price that will encourage extremely fast adoption rates. This is evident from the introduction of LED flashlights in Mali that completely took over the market in less than six months.

I also document the common way most cell phone charging is done in an off-grid environment. While it may not the be the most power efficient or battery safe method it works and is both cheap to the supplier and consumer. Used car batteries you can see are the 'power lines' in a lot of African villages that form the basis of distributed power distribution.

More at http://buildafrica.org/2009/04/28/led-lights-and-12vcell-phone-charging-mali/

Matt Berg is exactly right. LED light, battery, and small solar packages will hit the market within a year or two. LED lights and cell phones bring most if not all of the world's population into the electric (and communication) network. They can also be charged with a hand crank or bicycle generator. Extra 6 volt motorcycle and 12 volt car batteries can be charged in the course of driving a car or truck. Minimum "clean" electricity is affordably feasible in the world today, if only we realize it.

I wish the US government noticed. By my count, there have been over 700,000 solar/dynamo am/fm/sw radios distributed in Afghanistan by US and NATO forces since before our 2001 invasion. None of them can charge a cell phone or a standard size battery as currently configured. US AID is sending 16,000 solar/dynamo radios to the Sudan this year and plans to send 250,000 over the next few years as part of a nation-building program. None of them, so far, will charge a cell phone or an extra battery. All of them could.

These techniques can also be useful when the grid goes down, which is one reason why I say:

Solar IS Civil Defense

Solar Fountain at the Farmers' Market

2009-03-09T22:46:00.004-04:00

I take my solar fountain out for a walk from time to time at farmers' markets and in the city squares. Around the fountain are posters which display what I think are some of the rules of living within a restorative ecology. The splash of water makes a difference in public and children like to learn that they can turn the fountain on and off with the shadow of a hand.

Solar Fountain at the Farmers Market

More energy demo ideas for farmers' markets at Mr Franklin's Folks.

Weatherization Barnraising: This Old Extreme White House Makeover

2008-12-19T23:02:00.006-05:00

Saturday, December 6, between 30 and 40 people came to a house in Cambridge, MA to do a weatherization barnraising. We began checking in at 8 am to start work at 9. There was a blower door and an infrared camera to test our results. This was part of the public access TV series Energy Smackdown, a competition between different towns to see which can reduce their carbon footprint most. Materials were donated by EFI and Home Depot. Byggmeister donated the blower door and infrared camera and the operator, Kerry Koskinen, volunteered his time.

A blower door depressurizes the house by 50 Pascals so that you can see where the air leaks in. You can feel the draft with the back of your hand or see it with a smoke pencil (or a stick of incense or a cigarette). A blower door test costs from $200 to $500 and is well worth it if you are serious about cutting down infiltration. On average, 2 professionals in one day will reduce air leaks by about 250 cfm [cubic feet per minute].

We started at 4500 cfm at 50 pascals and after 3 hours of work and about $500 of materials we ended at 3850 cfm.

The infrared camera gave us a clear view of where the leaks were. The camera records temperature and you can see heat as the lighter colors and coolth as the darker. The temperature scale is registered on the left of the picture. Unfortunately, the battery on the IR camera conked out before Kerry could do the after pictures.

An IR thermometer which costs $70 rather than $7000 for an IR camera will also work but it just ain't as kewl. And there's an infrared "heat seeking ray gun" whose beam changes color in the presence of cooler temperatures that should be available sometime in 2009 for $39.99.

I was working on windows, putting Mortite rope caulk around the window sash. Unfortunately, the windows had plastic cladding and the composition of Mortite has changed since the last time I used it. It wouldn't stick. Very frustrating. I switched to insulated the wall sockets instead. Eventually, we changed to weatherstripping tape, a product I hadn't used before and didn't use that day either as I had a previous engagement and had to leave early. Later reports informed me that most if not all the windows were weatherstripped in record time.

The organizers reported that

With the "blower door" and infra-red camera to guide us, we found that we reduced the air infiltration at Chris and Pam's last weekend by 15%. This will be close to what you can expect in your own home if you decide to weatherize as we all learned to do. That should be worth about $200/year at current fuel prices.

We didn't finish insulating the attic hatch which would have reduced the air infiltration even more.

This is what the crowd looked like as we gathered for our instructions.

A good time was had by all, with the possible exception of the cat who I heard got insulated behind a wall for a day or so.

I'd like to see a weatherization barnraising at the White House. Complete with blower door test and infrared camera.

I'd like to see President Obama kick off the move to green jobs with a weatherization, insulation, and energy efficiency work day on public buildings. There are plenty of repairs and upgrades for government buildings that provide immediate rewards, saving enough money through lower energy costs to pay back in a couple of years. This is exactly where the green job economy starts. Architecture 2030 has a stimulus plan to create millions of jobs by applying energy efficiency methods to existing buildings that would pay for itself in energy savings within five years.

from Architecture 2030 Stimulus Plan - pdf alert:

With a federal investment of $85.56 billion each year for two years, the Plan will:
in just two years,
create at least 8.445 million new jobs and
create a new $1.6 trillion renovation market
and in just five years,
save consumers $142.33 to 200.88 billion,
reduce CO2 emissions by 481.13 Million Metric Tons,
reduce energy consumption by 6.17 Quadrillion Btu,
save 1.83 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and
save 83.35 million barrels of oil.

I'd like to see President Obama bring weatherization barnraisings to the national level but, even if he doesn't, we'll continue to have weatherization barnraisings in Cambridge. The next barnraising is at a local public school and will have the help of the MIT Sustainability Club, a student group. I can imagine weatherization and, later, solar barnraisings on one school building a month, with energy efficiency training building throughout the community. A consistent program of hands on energy education could be significant.

from MIT Sustainability Club:

HEET, a Cambridge-based energy efficiency team, is weatherizing the Cambridgeport Public School. We need someone who can install a few photosensors in classrooms and stairways so when it's bright enough from daylight, the lights turn off. The person should be able to teach a few volunteers how to do this work also (safely).

The Cambridge public school system needs help decreasing its energy use, so more of its budget goes to teachers and books, than to wasting energy. Help us help them.

The event is tentatively planned for January 19th, from 12:30 pm to 5 pm
Cambridgeport Public School, 89 Elm St. Cambridge

If interested, email Audrey@audreyschulman.com

HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team) was recently awarded a Climate Superstar by MCAN. Check out the article the Boston Globe wrote about HEET:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/11/30/turning_up_heet/

Windowbox Solar Air Heater

2008-11-17T23:23:00.002-05:00

This is a demonstration model of a solar windowbox air heater.

You can build it from a sheet of insulation board, some clear glass or plastic, and a furnace air filter painted black.

When the sun shines, the black absorber inside the insulated windowbox gets hot, heating air which rises into the room behind the window, and drawing cooler air from inside that room past the absorber in a thermal loop that lasts until the sun goes down.

At night, the cold air sinks to the bottom of the windowbox and closes off this thermal loop so there is no additional night time heat loss.

Increase the efficiency of the windowbox solar air heater with a solar electric, photovoltaic, PV fan.

This demonstration model uses a repurposed solar car window ventilator. Only when the sun hits the PV panel does the fan move air, an automatic solar circuit thermostatic control.

The windowbox solar air heater is a supplemental heater for one room with a south-facing window and can be modified to provide increased ventilation and cooling in the summer as Edward Sylvester Morse's 1881 solar air heater design did.

Cost for a 2 foot by 3 foot insulation board solar windowbox air heater is around $100. PV fan car vents are available for as little as $5. One recently built windowbox has heated air by at least 20º Fahrenheit, from 65 to 85º, and will do so all winter.

Old Solar: 1980 Barnraised Solar Air Heater

2008-09-27T20:53:00.003-04:00

This house has been solar heated for nearly 28 years now, the glazed black box on the south wall pumps heat into the living room whenever the sun shines, consistently and reliably. It was built in the Riverside neighborhood of Cambridge, MA in 1980.

This solar collector is an air heater that takes air from the kitchen,

moves it past the black absorber plate with a fan,

and then exhausts the solar heated air back into the living room.

Sometimes on sunny winter days, the people who live there have to flip the damper and dump the collector's air outside to prevent overheating.

It has worked unfailingly all these years without any major maintenance, even for the fan and the thermostat that turns it on and off.

Unfortunately, this solar air heater will soon be at least partially shaded. The vacant lot next door is being developed for condos and the new construction will shade the sun from the collector for part of the day. The collector's owners bought a part of the property next door so that their collector will still see some sun and received a settlement from the developer to compensate them for the loss of their sun rights. That money will help pay for the new solar electric panels they've installed on the roof.

The panels cost around $26,000 and have supplied as much as 2 kilowatts to the household.

There is a special meter just for the solar array.

Some days they even run the electric meter backwards.

After the state and Federal rebates, the installation will cost around $17,000, less the sun rights settlement. That old solar air heater not only provided reliable space heat for 25 years but will help pay for the new solar electric panels. Not bad.

In the course of this recent solar experience, one of the owners approached the city zoning board and the city council about solar shading and zoning. Now the city manager has a committee examining the issue of sun rights and the hope is that soon we will have a policy that will help Cambridge become more of a solar city.

This solar air heater was barnraised by the Urban Solar Energy Association, now the Boston Area Solar Energy Association, in 1980. It was one of six such projects sponsored by a community development corporation (CDC) called Riverside Cambridgeport Community Corporation. I located another project still around from those days at the Cambridge Community Center in the same neighborhood.

I haven't found out yet whether it's still working but the glazing needs to be replaced (there was a 25 year warranty on Kalwall, as I recall). Solar Barnraisings are beginning to come back into style. Reglazing this old collector would be a great way for the next generation of solar barnraisers to start.

PS: These types of simple air heaters can be modified for summer use to provide solar ventilation and cooling too, as Edward Sylvester Morse's solar air heater from 1881 demonstrated.

More Old Solar:
Old Solar: Keck and Keck Twentieth Century Modern
Old Solar: Venetian Vernacular
Old Solar: 1881

More on simple solar devices:
A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector

Homefront Advantage

2008-06-30T07:50:00.004-04:00

I finally finished a short video (less than two minutes) on WWII posters for the Homefront. These posters exhorted all of us to become part of the war effort. It wasn't about "going shopping" then, it was about energy and resource conservation, rationing ourselves for the benefit of our armed forces, and making the Homefront an effective front for fighting the Axis powers.

In 2004, I tried to contact the Kerry campaign to convince them to use these posters in reminding us of our history. I think they would be just as effective this election year.

I also hand delivered to Al Gore a packet with some of my favorite WWII posters but, again, have seen no results from this attempt.

Links to more of my favorite WWII posters at
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/29/2145/7162
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/22/225321/63/96/425004
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2006/07/its-all-one-war-that-never-ends.html

Solar IS Civil Defense, Illustrated

2008-05-12T20:33:00.006-04:00

Solar IS Civil Defense
Like this solar LED light and AA battery charger

or this solar/dynamo am/fm/sw radio, similar to the ones US and NATO forces have distributed in Afghanistan.

Solar IS Civil Defense
and, after all,
we are at war.

Solar IS Civil Defense
a flashlight, radio or cell phone, an extra set of batteries
solar powered
with hand or foot operated dynamo back-up,
emergency lighting and communication
day or night
from sunlight or
muscle power.

One solar component
is an LED flashlight
which also charges AA batteries.
This design allows for
battery switching,
charging a second set of batteries
to use in other devices.

The Bogolight is a charger and light
with an international development
addition:
each light bought
buys another solar LED light and battery charger
for someone who has no access to electricity
in this world.

Solar IS Civil Defense in another way.

US and NATO forces have distributed
solar/dynamo am/fm/sw radios
in Afghanistan.

Those solar/dynamos could easily charge
AA batteries
and establish a low power DC grid
through battery switching.
This level of survival electricity
would raise the standard of living
for most Afghanis,
helping to rebuild their lives
as well as their country and economy.

This circuit diagram is one way
to add this capability to the present
solar/dynamo radios now in Afghanistan.

The image I have is of a
solar swadeshi, hand-made electricity.
Instead of turning the handle
of the charkha spinning wheel
making thread
for khadi cloth
an hour a day as Gandhi did,
turning the crank of a dynamo a half hour a day,
the direct production of survival power
for yourself, your family, and your community,
swadeshi, local production.

How did Gandhi's Pashtun colleague,
Badshah Khan practice it?
And could his example
help bring peace back
today?

Lifecycle Costs of Photovoltaics

2008-03-02T17:49:00.002-05:00

Treehugger had a squib about a recent Brookhaven Labs analysis of lifecycle cost assessment for photovoltaic panels. There wasn't a direct link so I had to do a little digging to find it but the conclusion alone is worth it:

Using data compiled from the original records of twelve PV manufacturers, we quantified the emissions from the life cycle of four major commercial photovoltaic technologies and showed that they are insignificant in comparison to the emissions that they replace when introduced in average European and U.S. grids. According to our analysis, replacing grid electricity with central PV systems presents significant environmental benefits, which for CdTe PV amounts to 89–98% reductions of GHG emissions, criteria pollutants, heavy metals, and radioactive species. For roof-top dispersed installations, such pollution reductions are expected to be even greater as the loads on the transmission and distribution networks are reduced, and part of the emissions related to the life cycle of these networks are avoided.

It is interesting that emissions of heavy metals are greatly reduced even for the types of PV technologies that make direct use of related compounds. For example the emissions of Cd from the life cycle of CdTe PV are 90−300 times lower than those from coal power plants with optimally functioning particulate control devices. In fact, life-cycle Cd emissions are even lower in CdTe PV than in crystalline Si PV, because the former use less energy in their life cycle than the later. In general, thin-film photovoltaics require less energy in their manufacturing than crystalline Si photovoltaics, and this translates to lower emissions of heavy metals, SOx, NOx, PM, and CO2. In any case, emissions from any type of PV system are expected to be lower than those from conventional energy systems because PV does not require fuel to operate. PV technologies provide the benefits of significantly curbing air emissions harmful to human and ecological health. It is noted that the environmental profiles of photovoltaics are further improving as efficiencies and material utilization rates increase and this kind of analysis needs to be updated periodically. Also, future very large penetrations of PV would alter the grid composition and this has to be accounted for in future analyses.

The four types of PV examined were multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon, and thin-film cadmium telluride.

Cadmium telluride was best overall but

At least 89% of air emissions associated with electricity generation could be prevented if electricity from photovoltaics displaces electricity from the grid.

The estimated energy payback time (EPBT) for PV ranges from 6 years to 1.1 years, depending upon the type of PV, the insolation, and the installation. PV panels are usually rated to have a lifetime of 25 to 30 years. Now you know what to say when anybody questions whether PV's produce more energy than it takes to make them.

originally posted at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/28/232952/333/722/466075

Solar on the Radio

2008-02-18T23:58:00.004-05:00

I was interviewed on the Samantha Clemens show on Saturday, February 16 over Tufts University radio, WMFO. You can listen to the interview at http://www.samanthaclemens.com/Guests.html

We had a good time talking about the fact that Solar IS Civil Defense and other things. Have a listen and let me know what you think.

My Solar Christmas

2008-01-14T23:09:00.000-05:00

As a Christmas gift, I donated solar ovens to people in the refugee camps around Darfur. For the people there, who are at risk every time they have to leave the camp to seek scarce fuel, a solar oven can mean survival.

Jewish World Watch sends two solar ovens to the Iridimi and Touloum refugee camps in Chad for $30.

There are other solar oven programs as well.

This video from German CARE is especially close to my heart because it shows a woman in one of the 3 international displaced person camps they run in Easten Chad using a solar oven and a "haybox" or retained heat cooker to prepare a meal.

The haybox is simply an insulated box into which you place a hot pot. The heat has nowhere to go but into the food. You can also use a stone as a heat reservoir: heat the stone, place it in the box with a pot of food, cook. It's an old, old technique updated with solar. I love these ancient solutions to common problems.

Here's another youtube report on a solar cooker workshop held in Nyala, Sudan under the auspices of the Darfur Peace and Development Organization.

I also gave the gift of bees and trees as I do every year through Heifer International. Donate bees, trees, rabbits, geese, chickens, goats, as well as heifers to a project from their catalog somewhere around the world, including the US, in the names of your loved ones.

I like to give bees because they are all about pollination and improving agricultural production. Investment in pollination in these days of colony cluster disease is especially important.

I like trees because they are also a carbon offset. I've given a decade and more's worth of 60 trees a year to Heifer International. That should do something to absorb some of the carbon my energy use has released to the atmosphere.

Last but certainly not least, I also gave a few solar LED flashlights and AA battery chargers to friends and family. These Bogolights are very well designed with one button (on and off) and one screw to secure the battery bay. There's even a phosphorescent band so you can find the flashlight in the dark. They work as reading lights too. I know because I tried them out. They also use standard AA rechargeable batteries and allow for battery switching, charging one set of batteries while using another set in a second device.

Bogo means "buy one, give one" by which they mean, you spend $25 to buy one for yourself and the company sends a second to somebody in the developing world. You can even choose where and what program. A good deal.

I gave these solar flashlights because

Solar IS Civil Defense

Solar Fountain Harvard Square

2007-11-28T00:16:00.000-05:00

Harvard Square, November 2007

Ecological Design Principles
by Bill McDonough

Waste equals food
Use only available solar income
Respect diversity
Love all the children

Harvard Square, October 2007

This is a Solar IS Civil Defense arrangement.

The posters around the fountain include A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector and reproductions of historic WWII posters:

Ambrose Spencer has a larger solar fountain that he displays from time to time and I just read about Charles Goldman's portable solar fountain that he walked from Brooklyn to the Bronx.

click for movie
Ambrose Spencer and SunToys at AltWheels 2005

Video courtesy of http://energyvison.blogspot.com

For years, I've been recommending that people take these things to the public squares and most especially the farmers' markets, a core constituency of any green movement, as in the story "Mr Franklin's Folks".

It's all part of a Solar Survival Show and the sooner we start performing it the more likely we are to survive.

Solar Insurgency

2007-11-08T16:50:00.000-05:00

Small super-empowered vanguards can, with the use of systems disruption to amplify effort, delegitimize weakened governmental hierarchies and force them into the box of hollow states. However, instead of a pure organic government envisioned by Che, an organic open source insurgency, composed of a plethora of small super-empowered groups (that appeal to primary loyalties of tribe, cast, clan, family, gang, ideology, etc.), form in the vacuum. This open source insurgency will only bring fragmentation and perpetual conflict. The vanguard's role, is merely as a catalyst for its formation.

John Robb, Global Guerrillas

What if the global guerrilla vanguard was constructive rather than destructive? What if the vanguard was building resilience and autonomy, survival and security instead of chaos and destruction?

Small super-empowered groups can also do potholes as, reportedly, Hizbollah has been able to show in Lebanon. Maybe not global guerrillas but certainly a localized, decentralized model, Cuba's already gone through their Peak Oil experience and adapted through lots of public transport, bicycles, and local agriculture. In the 70s some of the 60s civil rights/antiwar/feminist/environmental energies of the Cold War baby boomers went into community gardens, farmers' markets, food coops, feeding programs, local agriculture, sustainability and environmental restoration. These networks still exist.

In the face of oil-funded terrorism, an oil war in Iraq, an overstretched, under-budgeted, corrupt social welfare system, and increasingly expensive natural disasters and emergencies Solar IS Civil Defense can be a logical open source guerrilla response.

For instance, a minimal amount of solar electric photovoltaic PV power charges batteries. Combine that with a hand crank, foot pedal, or string pull generator and you have virtually permanent personal electric power (cell phone, flashlight or reading light, computer, camera...) for emergency situations, just in case.

Before the invasion of Afghanistan, NATO forces dropped solar/dynamo AM/FM/SW radios for the civilian population. After the invasion, they gave away more radios. Unfortunately, the solar/dynamo wouldn't allow for battery switching. The NATO radios charge only the internal hardwired battery. If the solar/dynamo could charge batteries in the external battery bay, then you could charge one set of batteries while you used in rotation another two or three sets of batteries to operate a cell phone and light as well as the radio. The solar/dynamo would be a source of electricity day or night, by sunlight or muscle power, at least for the lifetime of the batteries, crank, pedal, string, and PV panel. Now add a bicycle.

The Bogolight charges standard size AA batteries and thus does allow for battery switching. The Bogolight is a solar LED flashlight or reading light that provides 4 hours of light for every 8 hours of sunlight. It is very well designed. You buy one for $25 and they donate a second light to various development programs around world. Solar IS Civil Defense at home and abroad.

The human scale combination of solar power with human muscle power allows the human power component to become a kind of Solar Swadeshi. Instead of turning Gandhi's spinning wheel making thread for khadi cloth, cranking or pedalling or pulling a string, the repetitive practice of personal power producing electricity for an AA battery all the way back to the grid.

Open source global guerrilla vanguard as solar scholar warriors fomenting resilience, cooperation, and the free exercise of the imagination, green ecological designers to save us at the last possible moment, the promise of the Whole Earth Catalog, Woodstock, New Alchemy Institute, the Viridian greens, Burning Man, worldchanging...

Solar Water

2007-09-21T01:27:00.000-04:00

The Watercone® is a solar powered water desalinator that takes salt or brackish water and distills it into freshwater. It is simple to use, lightweight and mobile.

Designed to produce 1.5 liters a day, it provides a child's daily needs for fresh water and reduces the number of children who die as a result of drinking unsafe water, currently estimated to be 5000 or more each and every day.

The WATERCONE® is a long lasting UV resistant Poly Carbonate product and can be used up to 5 years daily. The material is non-toxic, non-flammable and 100% recyclable. The black pan for the saltwater is already made out of 100% recycled PC. Even when the WATERCONE® becomes old and tarnished, it can still be used to collect rain water, as a roof panel or container for other goods.

The Watercone® project is looking for investors and companies to initiate mass production tooling and distribution. So the Watercone can be manufactured for a lower price and become affordable to the people in need...

Single products are not available at the moment!

The Watercone® was tested in Yemen in 2004 and in the Lake Baikal region of Russia in 2005.

Thanks to Ecogeek for bringing this design to my attention.

Until everybody who needs one can get a Watercone®, you can pasteurize water in clear plastic bottles by exposing them to the sun.

The Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) process is a simple technology used to improve the microbiological quality of drinking water. SODIS uses solar radiation to destroy pathogenic microorganisms which cause water borne diseases.

SODIS is ideal to treat small quantities of water. Contaminated water is filled into transparent plastic bottles and exposed to full sunlight for six hours.

Sunlight is treating the contaminated water through two synergetic mechanisms: Radiation in the spectrum of UV-A (wavelength 320-400nm) and increased water temperature. If the water temperatures raises above 50°C, the disinfection process is three times faster.

You can raise the temperature of the water in transparent bottles by putting them in the sun against a dark background.

Simple Solar Rules:
Dark heats up
Light reflects
Clear keeps off the wind

As suggested above, years from now, when your Watercone® wears out, you can use it to collect rainwater for the gravity drip irrigation system exhibited at the recent Design for the Other 90% show at NYC's Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

Change the color of the gravity drip bag to black and you have a solar hot water heater. [See Simple Solar Rules above.]

There are lots of other things you can do with sunlight and plastic containers.

I plant my garden a month or six weeks early by practicing Recycled Solar. Place a ring of plastic bottles on the soil, fill them with water, plant seeds of your choice (I've grown tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, and greens with this technique) in the middle, and cap it with another bottle with its bottom cut out. This makes a solar heated coldframe or cloche.

Solar IS Civil Defense.

M. Preston Burns, Pandora's Box, Experiential Geometry

2007-08-27T00:00:00.001-04:00

I've been experimenting for over thirty years with geometric models. Recently, my collaborator and the man who introduced me to this work, M Preston Burns, died and I have been going over his portfolio and papers. Mel or, as I knew him, Bud Burns worked primarily with the cube and the tetrahedron. He divided the square faces of the cube on the diagonal revealing the equilateral tetrahedron packed inside. He cut and hinged the cube and made a winged tetrahedron, eight hinged equilateral triangles, to fit inside. Then he filled the corners with ToyBlox, wooden forms which demonstrated the two-fold symmetries of the cube and tetrahedron. He called it Pandora's Box and demonstrated six inch, one foot, four, six, and eight foot models publicly since around 1970 when he built the first prototype.

This is a short video of what was probably his last presentation of Pandora's Box :

The advantage of working with these models is that they teach geometry and symmetry experientially, without the need of numbers or words. These forms are inherent in dimensionality. They are true, in the way a carpenter measures true - straight, level, plumb. By having three dimensional models you can turn around in your hands, you develop a hand-eye relationship with fundamental geometric forms. The cube and tetrahedron models of Pandora's Box teach the relationship between the right triangle and the equilateral triangle as well as two-fold and three-fold symmetry viscerally. This is full contact mathematics.

If you are interested in this kind of experiential geometry, there will be a symposium on "Synergetics and Morphology" at the Rhode Island School of Design on November 3 and 4, 2007 in Providence, RI. Further information is available from the Synergetics Collaborative

Another short video of Bud outlining his symbology system:

His friends will remember M Preston Burns at the current exhibit of his work in Cambridge, MA at Toscanini's Ice Cream, 899 Main Street on Tuesday, August 28 at 7 pm.

You can see more of his drawings at Bud's Gallery

Dancing the Cube in Jamaica

2007-08-06T22:54:00.000-04:00

This is a video Julie of Videosphere took December 2006 of Azisu, Nikita, Chaka, Werner, and Bud playing with a magnetic Quanta Cube, a cube made of 72 A and B Quanta. The A and B Quanta are the smallest common symmetrical tetrahedra of the regular tetrahedron and octahedron, two of the Platonic Solids. They were first discovered and analyzed by R Buckminster Fuller and Dr Arthur Loeb. Both the A and B Quanta come in left-hand and right-hand pairs, they are mirror images of each other, enantiomorphs. As positive/negative pairs, they are perfect for magnetic coupling and there are magnets at the centers of each of the four faces of each Quanta in the Quanta Cube, 288 magnets in all.

The Quanta Cube is derived from the work of M. Preston Burns, Bud, the skinny old dude in the video, who built his first Pandora's Box nearly 40 years ago. We worked together building various models of the box at different scales from eight feet to six inches and demonstrated them before the public and as part of an arts curriculum with Tribal Rhythms. Bud dissected a cube along its diagonals, hinged the pieces, and packed a "winged tetrahedron," a hinged tetrahedron with eight equilateral triangles, in the center. He filled the corners of the cube with ToxBlox, illustrating the symmetrical divisions of the cube. That is Pandora's Box.

One day, I was playing with a set of A and B Quanta I had made and discovered how to fill the box with A and B Quanta. Later I developed the magnetic coupling system with Carl Fasano of RISD.

More on Synergetic geometry and R. Buckminster Fuller at
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html
http://synergeticists.org
http://www.bfi.org/

More video of the Quanta Cube at
http://energyvision.blogspot.com/2006/02/evolution-of-cube.html

More geometry video from RISD:
http://energyvision.blogspot.com/2006/02/geometry-study.html

"You Can Fix All the World's Problems In a Garden"

2007-06-27T21:37:00.000-04:00

"You can solve them all in a garden. You can solve all your pollution problems and all your supply line needs in a garden. And most people actually today don't actually know that and that makes most people insecure."

So says Geoff Lawton from the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. He proves it here with a video describing how permacultural design and a local team desalinated the soil and grew a garden on 10 acres of barren desert land two kilometers from the Dead Sea. Within four months, the trees produced their first figs.

"We could regreen the Middle East. We could regreen any desert...."

I think Candide would agree. I'm not sure about Voltaire.

Here's a recycled solar cloche I found in Candide's garden.

Solar IS Civil Defense

Thanks to worldchanging for alerting me to this permaculture story.

Originally posted at dailykos.

Invisibility of Solar Power

2007-04-18T21:50:00.000-04:00

We swim in sunlight and solar power every day and every minute of daylight. We just don't recognize it as btu's, lumens, or watts. We don't count the calories in our solar diet and include no accounting in our energy budget for all the sunlight we already use.

Part and parcel of this invisibility is our inability to see actual working solar when it is right in front of our eyes. Probably the most common solar electric device around your town is the portable electric sign powered by PV panels. It's that orange thing behind the tree.

Can you see the PV panels on this health center in Brookline, MA? Would you recognize it as solar, glancing up from the street or your car window as you passed by?

This is the Porter Square Shopping Center in Cambridge, MA. The story I heard, is that the owners, one of whom was John O'Connor, author of _Who Owns the Sun?_ and an environmental activist, wanted people to see the PV panels so they raised them up on steel girders, an investment more costly than the panels themselves. I always thought they should have included some legend on the steel like "Solar Energy at Work" or "Solar Energy Works!" I think that might be a good idea on other public solar installations too. [The Porter Square Shopping Center has a geothermal heating system in addition to PV solar.]

This is one of those poles with PV panels you can see by the side of many highways. They are monitoring traffic, counting cars, sending congestion alerts. I've seen some powering emergency equipment too. They are all over the place once you recognize them.

This trash container is a solar powered trash compactor. They were invented in Jamaica Plain and Boston is testing out 50 around the city. This one is in Davis Square in Somerville. The first one I saw was on Spectacle Island last summer.

Boston is also trying out solar powered parking meters. As a bicyclist, I think there are still some design issues to be worked out.

Keep your eyes open. At least when the sun is shining.

Cross-posted at dailykos as an entry in my diary there.

Cell Phone Solar: The Video

2007-04-03T01:33:00.000-04:00

I wrote about Cell Phone Solar before at solarray and in one of my diaries at dailykos.

What I wrote a few months ago and what I learned in Jamaica is still true:

Cell phones change everything
Cell phone solar with AA/D battery charging is a useful minimum scale
The price point should be $10 American or less

Solar in Thirty Second Segments

2007-02-26T21:48:00.000-05:00

I made these thirty second public service announcements for public access TV around 1991. They served as intro and outro to the videos of the Boston Area Solar Energy Association lectures I shot and cablecast on Cambridge Community TV for a few years. The tape archive of all those lectures needs to be digitized.

The modern history of solar is hidden in plain sight but the best book I know on the earlier 2500 years is still A Golden Thread by John Perlin and Ken Butti.

I still don't understand the relationship between a calorie and a watt. I understand the btu though. Sorry, physicists.

These two trick questions were collaborations with the polymathic Ed Hill.

Minimum Solar Light

2007-02-09T23:45:00.000-05:00

Combine one of the new powerful LED lights powered by a couple of CR2032 button batteries like the Energizer Trim Flex LED with a solar panel from a novelty solar hat fan or one of the PV chips from a solar education kit, connect them together, possibly with a IN4003 blocking diode between the solar panel and the batteries to prevent electrical discharge through the panel at night (correct me if I'm wrong), and you have an effective solar rechargeable light suitable for reading.

There is a button battery solar charger which works fairly well. There is also the Micro Solar LED which I have not tried yet. You can also buy rechargeable button batteries and AC chargers.

I'd like to see solar light as available and affordable as a disposable cigarette lighter anywhere and everywhere around the world. Right now the price for this level of solar light is between $20 and $10. Commodity production and pricing should bring that down to $5 to $1.

Solar PSAs
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=gmoke

Solar Experiments
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2006/03/solar-video.html

Interviews and Site Visits
http://energyvision.blogspot.com

Crossposted to http://gmoke.dailykos.com

Solar IS Civil Defense

Unknown Auschwitz Satyagraha

2007-01-30T23:10:00.000-05:00

For all those
in war
       and the danger of war,
refugees and dispossessed,
sufferers of famine, pestilence
and disaster
             on this day.

Unknown Auschwitz Satyagraha

On April 21, 1985 I saw a public television program on the Holocaust. It consisted of the survivors meeting at the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, Yad Vashem I believe it is called, looking for those they had lost and telling the stories of what had happened to them. Most of the images were tight close-ups of faces saying things the eyes would not forget.

One woman said she had been a prisoner working in a typing pool in Auschwitz. The SS officer in charge told her when she arrived that she was allowed three mistakes a day or off to the ovens. They worked twelve hour shifts and typed thousands of reports all in quadruplicate. And only three mistakes a day.

Eventually, she was transferred to another job, another SS officer. He seemed to be a gentleman and she couldn't understand why he was in the SS. On the first day, he took her to a storeroom. It was in chaos. He asked, "Do you think you can clean this up?" Of course she said yes. He prohibited only one thing. She was not to open one certain door.

There came a time when she was working in the storeroom and heard screams. They were like the sounds "of a dying animal, being beaten to death, indescribable really." Naturally, they came from beyond the forbidden door. She had to open it. Behind the door was a set of stairs leading down. She descended and saw her gentleman SS officer beating a Polish worker with his belt in front of a group of other workers. She said, "The workers looked up and were struck as if they saw an angel. They had no idea women had worked above them. We had no idea there were men there below." The SS officer looked up too and saw her. He told her to get out but she didn't move. He came up the stairs and told her to go back but she didn't move. She said, "I'm not a hero but something happened. I grabbed hold of his sleeve and wouldn't let him go. He told me to leave but I looked into his eyes, for minutes, for a few seconds, for me it seemed like an eternity. And still I wouldn't let go of his arm. Finally he said, 'It's all right, go.' But I looked into his eyes for another eternity, holding his sleeve for dear life. Then he said, 'It's all right. I won't beat them anymore,' and I walked back up the stairs."

Later, she found out that the SS officer had been beating a worker to death with his belt every week, but from then on he stopped. Still later, just before a death march, the workers sent her a pair of high-topped boots and she believes it was only those boots that kept her alive through the march. She was an angel for them and those workers were angels for her.

Perhaps this story shows us what might have happened if Gandhi had met Hitler. Maybe he would have held Hitler's sleeve and searched his mad eyes into his madder soul until Hitler too said, "It's all right. I won't beat them anymore."

That evening there was a story on the Cambodian Holocaust on "Sixty Minutes" and the next morning on National Public Radio's Morning Edition a piece on the Armenian Holocaust.

The documentary I think was called "The Gathering," produced by Joel Levitch for Jason Films broadcast on April 21, 1985 on WGBH-TV Boston, MA.

Editorial Comment: I first published this piece online on August 1, 1997, although I wrote it the 80s, read it publicly in the early 90s, and produced a video version of the piece that was cablecast locally and exhibited in a museum show on courage in NY.

May we remember the example 
of this woman and Dr King and Desmond Tutu and Gandhi 
and Tolstoy and Thoreau and King Ashoka and 
create peace on this day, 
if only for a moment, 
        for a breath, 
        for ourselves.

Video version

Cell Phone Solar: What I Learned in Jamaica

2006-12-27T00:05:00.000-05:00

Driving up to Junction on twenty miles of bad road, we stopped for directions at a gas station and picked up an older woman waiting for a ride who guided us the rest of the way. A mile or two later, we turned a corner and saw a line of wind turbines on the slopes of Don Figeroa Mountain, the Wigton wind project (http://www.mct.gov.jm/energy_5.htm). I turned in my seat and asked the woman on her way to Junction whether the wind machines had made any difference.

She said, "No, mon, we still have to pay for the electric and the gas."

A little farther down the road we passed a sign for DigiCel, the local cell phone company. I turned to her again and said, "But the cell phone changed everything, didn't it?"

She smiled widely and nodded deeply.

On the sun porch and veranda, we videotaped the solar electric light system we'd brought. We showed the three different sizes of interconnecting solar panels and LED lamps with batteries in their cases and displayed the different sets of connectors. We had one connector to go from the battery to a USB device, another was a 12 volt socket like a car lighter. We had a set of attachments to charge cell phones from the solar batteries and another that let us connect directly to the solar panels as well.

In fact, we also had a solar/dynamo flashlight/radio which we were using to charge the rechargeable AAs the digital cameras required and a hand cranked dynamo specifically designed for charging cell phones. From what we saw, people in Jamaica were using mostly AAs and D cell batteries but we didn't have a D cell battery bay, only the one for AAs, a set of alligator clips,, and the multimeter.

We had cell phone solar.

Cell phone solar and AA/D cell charging: that's emergency, camping, and most of the world and it's a scale that is understandable, accessible, and probably affordable.

One night, I was talking to some Jamaican kids at Doreen's bar, the local watering hole a few steps away from the guest house. We showed them the lights and explained how the batteries in the lamps could also charge cell phones. They liked that idea a lot. I told them that the large solar lights cost $75 American and the smallest, the one on my backpack, was $30 American. They didn't like that. I said I thought solar lights and cell phone chargers could probably be available for $5 to $10 American and their eyes lit up.

Here's what I learned in Jamaica:
Cell phones change everything.
Cell phone solar with AA/D battery charging is a useful minimum scale.
The price point should be around $10 American or less.

Solar Fountain at the Farmers Market

2006-11-03T12:42:00.000-05:00

I took a floating solar fountain to the Central Square Farmers Market one Monday in September. It was a test of a simple system someone could carry on the subway or a bus. It consists of a one foot cube of a black plastic bucket, a couple of gallons of water in a collapsible camping jug, a recycled garbage can lid two feet in diameter spray-painted silver, some signs and the floating solar fountain. I can put the whole schmear on a little luggage wheeler, secure it with some bungie cords, and walk down the street easily.

When I get to the display site, I empty the bucket, place the silver lid on top, pour the water into the lid, and place the floating solar fountain in the center. When the sunlight hits the solar electric panels, a stream of water sprays out of the center and I have three fountain heads to choose what the pattern looks like. I tape some signs around the edge of the lid and stand back to watch.

Kids generally love to turn the fountain on and off with their shadows.

The signs around this display are

Solar Is Civil Defense

Simple Solar Design Principles

Dark heats up

Light reflects

Clear keeps off the wind

Ecological Design Principles

by Bill McDonough

Waste equals food

Use only available solar income

Respect diversity

Love all the children

A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector

Expand the Biosphere

Ecology is housekeeping raised to the nth degree

And my contact information.

You can find out where to buy a floating solar fountain and see video of a somewhat more elaborate solar fountain at

http://www.dailykos.com/... and

http://solarray.blogspot.com/...

I do such solar displays from time to time. Here's a video of me at MIT's Earth Day this year.

click for video

Solar Boston - Boston Harbor Islands

2006-09-04T18:29:00.000-04:00

I like to visit the Boston Harbor Islands at least once every summer. Last year, I noticed all the wind and solar in use out there. The Hull wind turbines dominate one section of the horizon and the skyline of Boston rises like some science fiction Oz from another. On the islands there is quiet and distance, a magic place only a ferry ride away.

This year my friend Werner and Julie of Videosphere joined me to island hop and produce a video about what we've seen. There are solar assisted composting toilets, solar electric panels, solar hot water heaters, small and large wind turbines, and even solar vehicles. The future is already here. All we have to do is recognize it.

It's All One War That Never Ends

2006-07-31T00:29:00.000-04:00

Al Gore was in town to sign his book, An Inconvenient Truth at Harvard Book Store, a great independent bookstore. The line was around the block and down the street. The store said he signed over 600 books in the hour he was there.

I went to give him a selection of WWII posters that have special resonance for today and my basic game plan for doing public education on practical renewable energy and resource conservation at such local events as the over 3700 farmers markets that happen every week during the growing season all around the USA (see http://solarray.blogspot.com/2004/12/three-solar-projects.html for further details).

You can see me hand him my paper on video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5oiZLNF0QQ&search=Videosphere
I'm the guy in the maroon shirt.

Here are copies of the four posters I gave Mr Gore. He said he liked the first image. I hope he saw the other images, too, and maybe even read my proposals about direct action on energy education. I'd like to see him train 1000 people to do practical solar as well as the 1000 people he plans to train to do his presentation.

For those of you who want more Gore, here's a 20 minute video of him at the TED conference in winter 2006 where he digs a little deeper on solutions to climate change

http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/06/al_gore_on_tedt.html#

You can find these and many more WWII posters at http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/collections/wwii-posters/

The Project for an Old American Century
(http://www.oldamericancentury.org) and the Propaganda Remix Project (http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html) are reworking some of these posters for 21st century purposes but I tend to be a purist and prefer the originals for their jarring resonances across the decades.

Solar Survival Show: Solar Fountain

2006-06-30T14:36:00.000-04:00

Take a look at Ambrose Spencer's SunToys and you will see why I say that if you are going to do only one public solar demo, you should do a solar fountain.

click for movie
Ambrose Spencer and SunToys at AltWheels 2005

Video courtesy of http://energyvison.blogspot.com

A floating solar fountain can be bought for $60 or less. It will be less impressive than Ambrose's larger model but add a basin and some water and you still have a great display that kids love to turn on and off with their shadows.

It already is a solar wishing well.

Floating and other solar fountains available from
http://www.kineticfountains.com/lily-floating-fountain.asp
http://www.siliconsolar.com/shop/catalog/Floating-Solar-Water-Fountain-p-9.htm
http://www.improvementscatalog.com/product.asp?product=217612zz&dept%5Fid=12130&cm_ven=NexTag&cm_ite=12130&code=macs=MP6NEXTAG
and
eBay

Buy one and set it up at the local farmers market or public square. Raise a little consciousness and make a few rainbows.

Cross-posted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/26/233752/597

No Solar Energy

2006-06-18T16:54:00.000-04:00

nosolarg, originally uploaded by gmoke.

My friend M. Preston Burns drew the cartoon and I wrote the caption.

Too bad it cuts so close to reality.

Solar Video

2006-03-24T22:32:00.000-05:00

I did some video of my solar projects with Werner Grundl of VideoSphere and http://energyvision.blogspot.com. He's is adding to his video blog (vlog) all the time, most recently with some important statements from the NE Sustainable Energy Association's "Building Energy" conference.

This video is about my solar reading lights which I wrote about in My Solar Bedroom in December, 2005.

This video is about my solar bike lights and back pack.

Click on picture This is a video of a solar/dynamo flashlight/radio modified to charge AA batteries thus becoming the flashlight, radio, and extra set of batteries recommended to have on hand in case of emergency as well as a permanent source of low voltage DC power day or night.

Solar is civil defense.

Update 3/21/07:

Here is the schematic that Richard Komp of Maine Solar Energy Association and Grupo Fenix drew for me when he modified one of my solar/dynamo flashlight/radios to charge AA batteries.

Solar is civil defense.

Science Fiction Fairy Tales

2006-01-17T21:57:00.001-05:00

Global Pendant

Once upon a time...

She was wearing a very interesting pendant. It first appeared to be a cloudy blue bead about an inch and a half in diameter hanging from a delicately linked chain around her neck. But it changed. On closer observation, the cloudiness moved slowly and steadily across the surface of the bead and the within the swirls of white and blue that could be water was the outline of the continents in green and shades of gray. It was a real-time composite satellite image of the Earth from space projected onto the surface of the pendant. You could see the latest hurricane developing in the South Atlantic that very evening.

She explained that her body network linked wirelessly to the Net through the PDA in her purse and then loaded the images into the bead. The Earth from space was only one of the programs available.

"Where's the dashboard for Spaceship Earth?" he asked.

"I don't know if there is one," she replied.

...and they all lived happily ever after.

But that's another story...

Earth from Space
World Cloud Cover
North American Jet Stream
Astronomy Picture of the Day

If anybody has seen something like a dashboard for Spaceship Earth, please let me know.

Nanobot Road

Once upon a time...

It started with self-repairing nanobots. These were devices that worked on the cellular level, on a biological model rebuilding damaged tissue cell by cell, protein by protein. It soon went beyond any previous DNA limits as these miraculous machines amplified our own, human repair systems. They were indefatigable and virtually immortal and remade us in their own image.

Now some of us have replaced fallible flesh with metal and plastic. We have optimized our abilities to see into the infra-red and ultraviolet, hear sounds dogs and whales are deaf to, made our skins resistant to heat or cold, the vacuum of space and the depth of the ocean. Our brains are faster than quantum computers. We can blush quicksilver and shine like mirrors if we wish.

We are immortal, self-remade clone cyborg replicants of our old human selves. Death is just a memory now and we go on forever rebuilding ourselves cell by cell every day, performing miracles each moment. History means nothing to us anymore, "humanity" even less.

And they lived happily ever after, ever after, ever after, ever....

The National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors has announced the development of nano-sized batteries which can be implanted into the body to power various devices, starting with an artificial retina (http://www.primidi.com/2006/01/16.html#a1415). The Center will design and build "nanomedical devices based on natural and synthetic ion transporters -- proteins that control ion motion across the membranes of every living cell."

Werner Grundl Is Video Blogging

2006-01-09T23:20:00.000-05:00

Werner Grundl is video blogging (http://energyvision.blogspot.com/).

The clips online so far are about the peace economy from Japan, the newest Hull, MA wind turbine, and Jerzy, a kid, performing "I Want to Be a Kid."

Werner is just beginning to play with online distribution onto the Web and the Net and is transferring the Videosphere archives from VHS to .mov, from tape to DVD, the Internet and beyond. In digital format, through the video blog, Werner Grundl and Julie O'Neil, Videosphere (WJulesvern@aol.com), can make thirty years of events and performances, debates and speeches, lectures and street corner and coffee table discussions about politics, arts, science, spirit and life around the world available to the world. In theory, at least.

Thirty years ago, we used to sit around in some of those coffee table discussions and talk about a technology that would allow us to record something on the street or the studio and distribute it to all those interested in real time as it's happening. Now we can do just about that with our cell phones, when all the connections work, when we can figure out how to make all the connections work. Or so I am told.

In theory, at least.

My Solar Bedroom

2005-12-06T19:39:00.000-05:00

My bedroom is now basically off-grid.

For years my bedside radio has been a solar/dynamo flashlight/radio. This particular one has been modified to charge AA batteries besides the hard-wired internal battery it was designed to charge. It gives me about two months of radio for an hour or more a day before running down. Then I place it next to the window for two days and have the use of a radio for another two months. In a pinch, a minute of turning the crank gives me about ten minutes of radio.

Of course, since I have been experimenting with these things, I have a few solar/dynamo flashlight/radios so I always have one charging in front of the window. You can see an example of a solar/dynamo flashlight/radio at http://www.modernoutpost.com/gear/details/om_sdradio.html. It's not the one I'm using but it looks to be much the same, without the ability to charge AA batteries in the battery bay, and is close to half of what I paid.

Now I've installed two solar powered LED lights above my bed so that my reading light is off the grid as well. Came in handy just the other day when we had a black-out for a couple of hours. The lights are attached to solar electric panels I place in the window and have batteries in the base of the lamps that provide power for up to 24 hours on a full charge. You can see the specs and order them at http://www.kansaswindpower.net/portable_led_lights.htm

This system is still a work in progress but for about $150 I've got one room that is independent of the grid, that provides me with radio and reading light for the foreseeable future without the use of coal, oil, gas, or nuclear energy. I have one room running on sunlight.

Now on to the next.

Update: Take your spare room off-grid! (http://www.off-grid.net/index.php?p=294) describes a solar electric system that powers two lamps, TV, Stereo, satellite box, dvd, vcr, and XBox, and a battery charger for the rechargeables in the battery powered clock.

This 600 watt hour system includes solar panels, batteries, and inverter and prices out at $1300.

I think that's a little pricey. A few years ago I assembled the parts for a one window solar electric system. It consisted of a 2 foot by 2 foot Kyocera panel, peak wattage around 64 kw, a power controller, battery, and wiring. The cost for those pieces was around $500, but I have yet to built the frame, hang the panel, and connect the system. In fact, I've since given the pieces to a friend in the hopes that he can finish the project before I would probably get around to it.

Solar Triple Decker

2005-11-22T21:59:00.000-05:00

Ambrose Spencer has been going over the figures for the current state of the art of PV electricity on for example, a Boston "triple decker," three family house. As Ambrose has been thinking about and working on these issues for decades now, I'd trust his numbers.

THREE FAMILY HOUSING

In Dorchester and other parts of Boston there are thousands of triple deckers. While some midatlantic cities are filled with attached row housing, aka terrace housing which has less surface area per unit available solar estate, the predominant housing in Boston is the triple decker. These have full basements which are starting to be converted into a fourth apartment. They have three flats one over another and their floor plate is 40 to 50 feet deep from the street and the width is 25 to 28 feet. The triple deckers are in all different orientations depending on the street. The narrow face is to the street. The separation runs from 20 feet to just three feet, and is usually large enough for a narrow driveway.

For a triple decker, long dimension east and west, on the roof you can erect a solar collector 10 to 12 feet high before you start to shade the solar estate next door. Having laid out solar thermal on a couple of these I know that you can put 400 to 500 square feet before the shading next door is too much of a problem .

EXISTING TRIPLE DECKER
SOLAR ELECTRIC SOURCE 10 Mwhrs.
Using your numbers: 500 square feet at about 16 percent, 8 kw
and using 3.5 hours per day annualized is 1266 hours of collection
and 10 megawatt hours.

LOADS
HEATING 17 Mwhrs
An insulated triple decker uses about 1500 gallons of oil for the three units. This is 210 mmbtu per year gross, or 50 Mwhrs net. Using a heat pump with fan coils and a cop of 3 the annual electric load for space heat is 17 Mwhrs; this does not include domestic hot water or air conditioning.

LIGHT, PLUG LOADS, APPLIANCES AND DRIVES 7.5 Mwhrs
I used 2 kw of pv allocated for a family of four. 1266 hours of collection is 2.5 Mwhrs per apartment times 3 is 7.5 Mwhrs

THREE AUTOMOBILES. 7.5 Mwhrs
I reduced my use to 10,000 miles per year at 250whrs /mile. This gives 2.5 Mwrhs times 3 is 7.5 Mwhrs. This is for battery electric vehicles.

EXISTING TRIPLE DECKER SUMMARY
On an annual basis 32 Megawatt hours is needed of which the on site solar electric, 10 Megawatt hours, can only supply one third.

IMPROVED TRIPLE DECKER
SOLAR ELECTRIC SOURCE 10 Mwhrs
The supply is the same 10 Mwhrs per year

HEATING 6.2 Mwhrs
Super insulation retrofit can cut the heat load in half, and radiant ceiling heat can raise the cop from 3 to 4. These two changes reduce the heating load to 6.2 Mwhrs.

LIGHT, PLUG LOADS, APPLIANCES AND DRIVES 5 Mwhrs
Using additional efficiency, task area illumination and higher efficiency appliances these electric loads can be cut by a third. to 5 Mwhrs.

THREE AUTOMOBILES. 7.5 Mwhrs
This load remains unchanged.

IMPROVED TRIPLE DECKER SUMMARY
The load has been reduced to 18.7 Mwhrs of which the solar electric can carry more than half

CONCLUSION
I have briefly explored a realistic application of solar electricity to the type of housing most common in Boston's older neighborhoods, in the context of a likely necessity of a 50 year schedule for accelerated climate change mitigation, although the schedule will likely be more demanding as a result of climate induced positive feedback.

I have found that to supply a typical triple decker on a Net Zero Energy basis the efficiency of the photovoltaic efficiency would need to be raised by 2 to 3 times. That is 32 percent efficiency for the superinsulated, radiant heated improved building and 48 percent efficiency needed for the unimproved building.

In a zero carbon future, all of the triple decker load not supplied on site will need to be supplied by Wind, Biofuels and other sustainable forms of renewables. Each of these carry attendant development problems like the siting of wind farms, bird kill, and the difficulties of achieving sustainable forestry on privately held lands.

Hybrid thermal electric collectors being developed by Shell in collaboration with the Dutch government and other partners can help reduce the heating load still further, but even another reduction in electric part of the heating load by one half will only affect the total electric load by 10 percent for the existing building case. .

Emergency Preparedness 101

2005-11-09T22:13:00.000-05:00

The BASEA Forum

Renewable Energy Lecture Series

November 10 , 2005

Emergency Preparedness 101

What happens when the power goes out
and how to best get through the storm

David O'Connor
Director
Cambridge, MA Emergency Management Department

1st Parish Unitarian Church ,

#3 Church St., Harvard Square, Cambridge

Doors open at 7:00 p.m. , Presentation starts at 7:30 p.m.

Homefront Advantage

2005-08-25T11:57:00.000-04:00

I believe it is time to bring the oil war home, especially since fuel prices indicate it's coming this direction whether we like it or not. My gut has been telling me that the homefront attitude of WWII, with its emphasis on belt-tightening and conserving, may be an appropriate response to our current situation.

Doing a little research on WWII slogans I came across a great collection of posters at http://www.state.nh.us/ww2/. You should really look at the pictures but here are some of the words:

Do with less so they'll have enough!

Millions of troops are on the move... is YOUR trip necessary?

Have you really tried to save gas by getting into a car club?

All fuel is scarce. Plan for winter now!
1. Winterize your home!
2. Check your heating plant!
3. Order fuel at once!

Food is a weapon. Don't waste it!

Can all you can. It's a real war job!

Plant a victory garden. Our food is fighting.

Use it up - wear it out- make it do! Our labor and goods are fighting.

I wonder if reproductions of these posters would be useful at Camp Casey or in Washington DC on September 24.

PS: One slogan I'd add for the 21st century is
Solar Is Civil Defense

Solar Swadeshi, Hand-Made Electricity

2005-05-30T22:38:00.000-04:00

After much thinking, I have arrived at a definition of "Swadeshi" that perhaps best illustrates my meaning. Swadeshi is that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote.
Speeches and Writings of M. K. Gandhi, 1919 (http://members.tripod.com/~anusandhan/articles/article1.html)

Gandhi was a middle-aged man when he first asked his wife Kasturba to teach him to use the spinning wheel. Once he had mastered the wheel, he practiced spinning every day for the rest of his life. Home-spinning became a symbol for independence and self-reliance throughout India under his encouragement and direction.
(http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1998/3/98.03.05.x.html)

Gandhi would spin for an hour each day, usually producing a hundred yards of thread, and helped develop a simple spinning wheel (charkha) that allowed many to do the same. He believed that spinning was the foundation of non-violence. I believe this type of practical labor has to be the core of any sustainable ecological action.

We need a solar swadeshi, an ecological practice on a daily basis that allows us to live within our solar income. Gandhi used the charkha, the spinning wheel. What would be an ecological charkha, a solar charkha? I suggest a hand cranked, pedalled, or treadled dynamo. Work it for 30 minutes a day and generate watts and watts of electrical power for your own use or to put back into the grid for the benefit of others. Solar swadeshi. Hand-made electricity. 21st century khadi cloth. Real electrical power to the people. True energy independence with minimum waste, at least in terms of generation. Doing what Gandhi did with cloth but now with electricity.

In this "deregulated environment" with oil used as a weapon and national security identical to energy security, direct ecological and economic action toward renewables and away from the nuclear, gas, coal, and oil that we presently use can be a primary political as well as economic act. A treadle/pedal/crank powered generator with a flywheel can be the solar swadeshi, an ecological and economical electrical charkha.

One humanpower is about one sixth horsepower. A healthy person can put out 100 watts of power for hours on end and 300 watts in a sprint. Let's not be batteries in the Matrix but generators in a net metered ecological Network.

The ultimate goal I envision is to meet all electrical non-space-heating and refrigeration needs within the space of one south-facing window (4-10 square feet of photovoltaics) and a half hour to an hour a day's human power. The realistic goal today is most of the electrical load with the exception of refrigeration and space-heating: lighting, TV, audio, computer, phones...

This isn't Edward G. Robinson in "Soylent Green" pedalling a broken down three speed to light one sickly incandescent bulb. This is more like Lance Armstrong powering his energy efficient Spanish villa with a morning workout on his state of the art Tour de France simulator stationary bike and power generator.

from http://www.swadeshi.org/philos.htm

The essential ingredients of the Swadeshi thought may be summarised as follows :

1. Swadeshi means that which is natural and native to a country and society, but allows scope for assimilation of wholesome and beneficial elements from the outside. This applies to economics as well as politics; culture as well as technology.

2. It is the principle of prefering the neighbourhood over the remote.

3. It commands need-based life, and rules out unlimited consumption as an end.

4. It renews and relies on family, community and society as socio-economic delivery systems. It does not substitute these traditional institutions by the State and the Market.

5. It is not autarky; but a global alternative which accepts only need-based transnationalism.

6. Swadeshi restores economics to its earlier definition which even now the dictionary meaning of economy indicates, namely, practical human needs, frugality, savings, thrift etc. and seeks to remove the latter-day distortion of defining economics as multiplication of wants and efforts to satisfy them, powered by greed.

Stated in simple terms, Swadeshi rejects materialistic and imperialistic homogenisation and aimless transnationalism of the Western assumption. Swadeshi is a multidimensional thought, embracing civilisational, political and economic aspects of human life and presenting an integrated vision of life in harmony with nature.

from http://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap86.htm

The message of the spinning-wheel is much wider than its circumference. Its message is one of simplicity, service of mankind, living so as not to hurt others, creating an indissoluble bond between the rich and the poor, capital and labour, the prince and the peasant. That larger message is naturally for all...

The message of the spinning-wheel is, really, to replace the spirit of exploitation by the spirit of service...

There is no "playing with truth" in the charkha programme, for satyagraha is not predominantly civil disobedience but a quiet and irresistible pursuit of Truth.

NB: I've been thinking about these ideas for quite a few years now. It seems appropriate to be publishing them on Memorial Day. People laugh at Gandhi for his insistence on swadeshi, on "wasting" his time by drawing thread from a spinning wheel but he was doing something fundamental in terms of self-reliance and self-respect on a level so obvious and so deep that most people can not see it at all. This lesson is one we need now more than ever. This practice is something that can generate the beginnings of real economic freedom.

Gaian Design of Ecological Alchemy

2005-05-08T22:39:00.000-04:00

A history of New Alchemy Institute. Here is the core of their natural systems designs.

_A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise of Ecological Design_ by Nancy Jack Todd
Washington: Island Press, 2005
ISBN 1-55963-778-1
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=fz1mCrlAEn&isbn=1559637781&itm=1

(82-83) The living world remained our conceptual model for the architecture of the bioshelters. Evolution is continuous, dynamic, and highly adaptive. As John was wont to point out, the Laws of Thermodynamics determine that there is a progressive deterioration in the quality of energy, but living forms create spatial form and morphic order. In defiance of entropy, energy can be harnessed to work on the side of life - which is precisely what we were trying to do.

(190) A Gaian worldview holds all life to be a sacred ecology in which humankind serves as steward.

(155) Gaia knows what she is doing, and our best bet is to get better at playing junior partner in the overall scheme of things.

(142) We had, in our experiments in applied Gaia, decoded some of the elements for healing both people and the planet and had helped to give the world what Gregory Bateson had called a "paradigm with a future."

(162-163) Twelve principles fundamental to the practice of ecological design:

1. Geological and mineral diversity must be present to evolve the biological responsiveness of rich soils.
2. Nutrient reservoirs are essential to keep such essentials as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium available or the pants.
3. Steep gradients between subcomponents must be engineered into the system to enable the biological elements to evolve rapidly to assist in the breakdown of toxic materials.
4. High rates of exchange must be created by maximizing surface areas that house the bacteria that determine the metabolism of the system and facilitate treatment.
5. Periodic and random pulsed exchanges improve performance. Just as random perturbations foster resilience in nature. in living technologies altering water flow creates self-organization in the system.
6. Cellular design is the structural model as it is in nature where cells are the organizing unit. Expansion of system should also use a cellular model, as in increasing the number of tanks.
7. A law of the minimum must be incorporated. At least three ecosystems such as a marsh, a pond, and a terrestrial area are needed to perform the assigned function and maintain overall stability.
8. Microbial communities must be introduced periodically from the natural world to maintain diversity and facilitate evolutionary processes.
9. Photosynthetic foundations are essential as oxygen-producing plants foster ecosystems that require less energy, aeration, and chemical management.
10. Phylogenetic diversity must be encouraged as a range of aquatic animals from the unicellular to snails to fish are as essential to the evolution and self-maintenance of the system as the plants.
11. Sequenced and repeated seedings are part of maintenance as a self-contained system cannot be isolated but must be interlinked through gaseous, nutrient, mineral, and biological pathways to the external environment.
12. Ecological design should reflect the macrocosmos in the microcosmos, representing the natural world miniaturized and reflecting its proportions, as in terrestrial to oceanic and aquatic areas.

(183) This approach to watershed restoration involves the following:
1. Modifying hydrological cycles on a microscale.
2. Working first upstream then downstream in the watershed,
3. Developing many local points of intervention.
4. Allowing local topography, including buildings, parking lots, and roadways, to direct design.
5. Employing natural systems engineering.
6. Incorporating organisms such as fungi, mosses, and higher plants to sequester metals, bind phosphorus, and destroy pathogens or to break down organic compounds, including petroleum-based products.

Recycled Solar Results

2005-04-28T22:57:00.000-04:00

There were only two entries for the Recycled Solar Contest. First Prize went to Daanish Maqbool for a heat driven fan made from aluminum cans and Second Prize went to Jonathan Tejada for a wind generator made from plastic bottles.

Both were conceptual rather than working models. No Tim Harkness Prize for most imaginative design was awarded.

On a day with rain showers, Tim Harkness' small parabolic dish maxed out the oven thermometer at over 600 degrees Fahrenheit or 315 degrees Celsius.

Looking over my collection of single LED lights that are already on the market today, I could imagine a solar LED reading light that will allow every child around the world to read under the covers.

In 1988, I visited China and spent a few days in the city of Guangzhou. The first evening there I walked down the street and saw men in the doorways standing before small tables. They were repairing and selling disposable lighters.

Could a solar reading light become as relatively affordable and ubiquitous as a disposable lighter?

Recycled Solar

2005-03-31T00:46:00.000-05:00

Recycled Solar

Recycled Solar

Take the label off a clear plastic 2 liter
soda/pop/tonic bottle.
Cut the bottom off the bottle.
Plant a seed.
              Press the edge of the bottomless bottle 
              into the soil around it.

The bottomless bottle is now a cloche or hot cap,
allowing earlier planting.

Open the bottomless bottle's bottle top 
for warm days and close 
it 
   for cold nights.

Take the labels off a few more
clear plastic 2 liter soda/pop/tonic bottles.
Fill them with water
and surround the bottomless bottle cloche hot cap.
Tie a string around this circle
and pull it tight.

During the day, the bottles of water
get warm
         and stay warmer longer at night.

This recycled solar cloche
can take a month off planting season.

If you have green
plastic 2 liter soda/pop/tonic bottles,
place them on the North side
of the solar circle.
                     The darker the bottle
the hotter the water gets
in the sunlight.

This is a two tone solar cloche.

Take some silver paint
and paint the backs of
the green bottles
                  to reflect
                   light back 
into the system
and you have a
               three tone tuned
                     solar
                    cloche.

I built one once
for Candide's garden.

Folding the Circle

2005-03-09T18:13:00.000-05:00

A friend was just visiting and brought the book, _The Geometry of Wholemovement_ by Bradford Hansen-Smith (ISBN 1-887229-24-8)

Hansen-Smith folds complex polyhedra out of circles, specifically paper pie plates. He writes of his method: "There was no measurement, only the proportional movement of dividing into the circle. I could form a circle into a tetrahedron, truncate it, reform it into an octahedron, into a tetrahelix, transform it into a cube and a hundred other spatial configurations simply by an in-and-out moving of a pattern of folded lines."

The book is excellent. You can get it from the author:
Bradford Hansen-Smith
4606 N Elston #3
Chicago, IL 60630
bradhs@interaccess.com
www.wholemovement.com
773-794-9764

Digging Infinity! with Lord Buckley

2005-02-11T23:17:00.000-05:00

_Dig Infinity!: The Life and Art of Lord Buckley_ by Oliver Trager (NY: Welcome Rain Publishers, 2001 ISBN 1-56649-157-6) (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=fz1mCrlAEn&isbn=1566492920&itm=1)

I recently read a biography of Lord Buckley, the declaimer of "The Nazz," known as a comedian, because I knew "The Nazz" from the late 60s and early 70s and was interested in discovering what else Lord Buckley did. The book comes complete with CD of some of his proto-Beat, hipster raps like "Subconscious Mind" and "Black Cross," a little of "Knock Me Your Lobes," Shakespeare in jive, and, of course, "The Nazz," his hip Gospel.

Turns out Richard "Lord" Buckley was a traveling showman from California who worked Depression Era dance marathons and walk-athons as an emcee and comic and the nightclub and Vaudeville and burlesque circuit in Chicago, Las Vegas, NY, LA, and SF. A self-made aristocrat, he gave himself his own title and gathered a Royal Court around him filled with people he dubbed Prince, Princess, Count, Earl, Sir, Lady...

Lord Buckley believed, "We have to spread love. We've got to. People of this nation have got to learn to be kinder, more gracious. They must rehearse kindness and graciousness with other people. They must do that. They must be more generous. The people who have things who are living next to people who haven't got things should give them some of the things that they have. We have to learn to give more. We have to learn to tighten, to magnetize this nation by love in this coming fight that we're in. We've _got_ to do that. We must do it. We _absolutely_ must. The government cannot do everything. The people must help. And they can help it by rehearsing love for each other."

"Rehearsing love for each other" where "love is the international understanding that each and every one of us have exactly the same problems to fight," and where God is love, as well as people:

"I went out looking for God the other day and I couldn't pin him. So I figure if I couldn't find him I'd look for his stash: his Great Lake of Love that holds the whole world in gear. And when I finally found it I had the great pleasure of finding that people were the guardians of it. Dig that. So, with my two times two is four, I figured that if people were guarding the stash of love known as God then, when people swing in beauty, they become little Gods and Goddesses. And I know a couple of them myself personally and I know you do too."

Buckley not only spun the Gospel his own way but he also told other Bible stories like "Jonah and the Whale," some of Aesop's fables, and the biographies of such people as Einstein and Gandhi. He was a pioneer monologuist and helped develop the comedy record.

He also dramatized the memoirs of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, _The Power Within_. De Vaca was a Spanish explorer who was shipwrecked in Florida and walked through the plains of the Americas for eight years until finally reaching Mexico. De Vaca and his companions survived because of his reputation as a healer. De Vaca wrote, "There is a great power within that when used in beauty, in Immaculate Conception and complete purity can cure and heal and cause miracles.... When you use it, it spreads like a magic garden, and when you do not use it, it recedes from you." Reportedly, De Vaca healed by laying on hands.

Buckley believed that everybody had access to this ability - if they swung in beauty. "All over this world in the alleys and valleys, on the plains, on the mesa, and the mountain top on the plateaus to the sands to the Gulf through the whole scene of this world - black, green, blue, yellow, and pink - there's loaded with _beautiful_ people that we never hear a thing about. We only hear about the winners and the losers and the others. But they're there. And those people are the protectors and progressers of the vaults of love which is known as 'God.' And when you appeal, when you go up a ladder, you go up the ladder and you go up so that you may get your vibrational points spread out so they go round-wise, electronic-wise, and you contact these people and you see their beauty and you hear the voices of the children and you see the sweet swing and the mighty power that's going ahead for greater perfection - for greater individual protection, for greater individual understanding, for greater presentation of the powers of the Garden of Love and contact with these people and - thack! - you could feel burning right in your hand."

One of Lord Buckley's most powerful pieces was "Black Cross" a poem by Joseph Newman, uncle of Paul Newman, about Hezikiah Jones, a black subsistence farmer, who runs afoul of the white man's preacher. He is accused of believing in nothing and responds:

Ah be'lieve that a man should be beholding to his neighbah
Widout the hope of Heaven or de fear o' Hell's fiah."
"But you don't understand," said the white man's preacher,
"There's a lot of good ways for a man to be wicked!"
And they _hung_ Hezikiah as _high_ as a pigeon,
And the nice folks around said, "Well, he had it comin'...
'Cause the son-of-a-bitch didn't have no religion!"

Can you say son-of-a-bitch on primetime network TV these days?

Buckley thought that religion would be replaced because "the steeples of the churches are too high for holes in the pants of the poor. And the drunk, the sickest and squarest of all, lies too long outside the closed doors without the arms of love to give him or her or it or they surcease, as it is written in every page of The Book." He said, "according to the study of the science of the cycle of design, that there must have been, and is working now, a whole new movement in great public beauty and therapy to take over the delinquencies of the church at _just_ the propitious moment.

And I found that that is _music_, ladies and gentlemen... music."

Buckley advised fighting injustice with humor: "It is the duty of any given nation in time of high crisis to attack the catastrophe that faces it in such a manner as to cause the people to laugh at it in such a way that they do not die before they get killed." At the same time, "he dug that it made no difference who be in the driver's seat since, no matter who, he be bound to square up - since square be the shape of all driver's seats."

Swing in beauty, cats and kitties, treat each other as the Lords and Ladies we all are, our noblest natures, all "created level in front."

Richard, Lord Buckley always has the last word:

"Well, I would like to say that in my feelings for the people everywhere I've worked, that their wonderful attention, their divine concentration, their precious presence and their attitude to _each_ and _every_ performer on the stage only goes to prove more and more: that the flowers, the beautiful magical flowers are _not_ the flowers of life. That _people... people_ are the true and wonderful flowers of life and it is always a great honor and a great privilege and a rare pleasure to even temporarily stroll into the gardens of their attentions. God swing them and God love them."

Further information at http://www.lordbuckley.com

Project for a New Year: Free Secular Literacy for All

2005-01-19T00:26:00.001-05:00

"Asked about the biggest threat to their groups' survival, a militant says that 'free secular education for all' leading to an 'increase in the literacy rate' is the gravest threat to the survival of the jihadi groups in Pakistan."

_Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill_ by Jessica Stern (NY: HarperCollins, 2003), page 230

"Free secular education for all."

Why not an ad hoc, all media, open source push to make literacy possible for everybody in the world? When Google can announce that it will digitize the NY Public Library, why not free secular education for all, teaching literacy in local languages available through cell phone, Web/Net, radio, video, hard copy, and word of mouth?

Why not universal availability of learning materials by every means possible, taking into account the varieties of learning intelligences and the concept of literacy beyond the written word, rune, and ideogram, beyond numeracy? What about providing universal global access to the world's libraries to balance those who teach only the the One Holy Book, be it Koran, Bible, or little red book, only by rote, and always subject to higher or Higher Authority?

We are already a couple of years into the UNESCO Literacy Decade scheduled to run from 2003-2012 (http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=5000&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html). The goals include achieving "50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women... ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality... eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005 and achieving gender equality in education by 2015."

With some 800 million or more illiterate adults in the world, about two-thirds of whom are women, and 100 million children children with no access to school, total literacy is going to be a difficult process. Making the best methods and resources universally and freely available through as many different media as possible would be a great help.

Here is an example of what is already beginning to happen from Meskel Square, a blog about Ethiopia (http://www.meskelsquare.com):

"The shock of the new (http://www.meskelsquare.com/archives/2005/01/the_shock_of_th.html))

"Just returned from a three-day trip to Ethiopia's very beautiful Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR).

"The scenery was stunning and the rural development sites we visited (with the UN's World Food Programme) were fascinating. But, for me, they were topped by a visit to a remote high school, a day-and-a-half's trip on rocky, unmade roads south of Addis Ababa.

"Just returned from a three-day trip to Ethiopia's very beautiful Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR).

"The scenery was stunning and the rural development sites we visited (with the UN's World Food Programme) were fascinating. But, for me, they were topped by a visit to a remote high school, a day-and-a-half's trip on rocky, unmade roads south of Addis Ababa.

"As we walked up to one of the outdoor classrooms, we heard the voice of a Maths teacher going into great detail about the angles of a parallelogram. When we went in, we found the 60 or so students were all taking their lesson from a professor speaking through a state-of-the-art Samsung plasma video screen that would be way beyond the budget of many schools in the UK. The lesson was being beamed in from Addis via a huge satellite dish outside through a rack of Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) receivers.

"Headteacher Mohamed Nur Osman said there had been an initial adjustment period when the screen was first installed six months ago. Students had found it hard to keep up with the English used by the Addis-based teachers. But they soon got used to it and grades had improved by up to 45 per cent over the period.

"These days students at Mudula Senior Secondary School receive Maths, English, Civics, Chemistry, Biology and Physics lessons by satellite. They have a computer room stocked with 35 Acer PCs. And they also have a handful of Dells which they plan to use in two months time to access the internet, also by satellite.

"Apparently, every high school in Ethiopia has similar equipment (including the plasma screen), paid for by the Ministry of Education.

"The technology and its application were interesting enough. I also liked the sheer excess of it all. If someone is going to provide you with lots of gear, why settle for a boring old TV monitor. If in doubt, go for plasma."

Resources to begin the Project for a New Year: Free Secular Literacy for All

I've been playing with a list of 100 Basic Words I found someplace on the Net a few years ago. I think there's a poem in there someplace:

yes no hello goodbye good morning good night

please thank you you're welcome excuse me/I'm sorry

who what/what kind which where when why how how much/many (some languages have one word for both)

and but also maybe only too (as in "in excess")

a little

something someone anything anyone nothing no one

man woman child boy girl

mother father sister brother son daughter husband wife family friend

food water breakfast lunch dinner

day night/evening morning afternoon dawn sunset

chair table pen paper book newspaper magazine

money store restaurant car city town

language student teacher

east west north south right left

help

see hear think speak know (most languages have 2 verbs for to know; to know a fact and to know a person/place) understand

do, make (often the same)

ask

eat drink

want need

study/learn (often the same)

sit stand walk run

come go live (most languages differentiate between to live as in 'to be alive' and to live as in 'to inhabit' )

like/love (often the same)

buy sell work pay

look for, visit

good/well bad

beautiful/pretty ugly interesting

big small

sick well nice

hot cold

new old (many languages distinguish between an old person and an old thing)

near far

Some categories of useful words:
Food
Parts of the body
Clothing
Family
Occupations
Nationalities and language names
Days of the week and the months
Times of day
Your own occupation
Your own nationality
Your native language and others you speak

from http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000515.php

Open Here: The Art of Instructional Design

"I thought I was the only one in the world stealing the safety instruction cards from airline seats because of their terrific folk graphics. For radically clear thinking nothing can beat a really good set of wordless diagrams; hundreds of examples from around the world are paraded here. Designers of the world, please heed."

-- Kevin Kelly

Open Here: The Art of Instructional Design
Paul Mijksenaar and Piet Westendorp
1999, 144 pages
$6
Joost Elffers Books

The Literacy Site (http://www.theliteracysite.com/) will donate books to children around the world if you visit the site and click.

"Literacy in SIL (http://www.sil.org/literacy/) distinctively focuses on developing programs in lesser-known and endangered languages and emphasizes using the mother tongue as the gateway to basic literacy. SIL's vision for language programs is to see literacy become a sustainable community value with the ownership of literacy goals and activities in the hands of the people."

You should be aware that the World Literacy Crusade seems to be a Church of Scientology project.

Human Power Stations

2004-12-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

Here's a company that sells human power generators
http://www.windstreampower.com/humanpower/hpg.html

There's always Freeplay and they have a "FreeCharge Marine Power Pack" that's "available soon"
http://www.freeplayenergy.com/index.php?section=home

And this company, Dynosys, seems to have optimized the wheel-rim generator
http://www.dynosys-ag.ch/indexe.html

Three Solar Projects

2004-12-09T21:50:00.000-05:00

1. Solar Product Chain

I want to make a series of steppingstone products to full solar electric power:

solar powered LED light - flashlight, keychain or backpack fob
solar jewelry - rings, bracelets, necklaces, with solar charging brooch and rechargeable battery pack
solar bicycle light (for visibility)
This set of products uses button batteries, CR2016 and CR2032 size and hearing aid batteries, for instance. The simplest system is a solar cell, with a blocking diode, a set or rechargeable batteries, and a single LED

solar/dynamo flashlight/radio and battery charger
The charger works on AA and other dry cell sizes, possibly up to 12 volts. A radio and flashlight are what is recommended in case of emergency and disaster. If the extra set of batteries is rechargeable, the solar/dynamo system can produce electricity day or night by sunlight or muscle power as long as the batteries can carry a charge.

solar car battery charger (one square foot)
12 volt (and multiples)
Every car can become a "hybrid vehicle" by installing an extra battery and a control system to charge from the alternator when the engine's battery is finished. Battery switching, with 12 volt or dry cell or even button batteries is a key concept in the solar transition.

one window solar electric system (four square feet)
12 volt, with AC inverter and possible grid connect
The one window system is 4 square feet of solar collector and should be almost as easy to install as an air conditioner. Open the window, erect the frame, aim it at the sun, attach collector, plug it in, and close the window.

There should be a consistent look and feel to all the products along the product chain and as much inter-operability as possible.

2. Your Southernmost Window

A series of half hour programs for TV, videotape, DVD and other digital media

What you can do with one south-facing window, or how to live within a solar budget, including designs viewers can replicate at home to provide heat, light, ventilation, and/or stimulate ecological growth.

Program 1. What You can See from a Window - one square foot of sunlight, orientation to the sun, design principles, window types, glazing, heat loss, infiltration, insulation, heating ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), air purification, breathing

Program 2. Every Window in the House - window types take 2, radiation and convection, caulking and weatherstripping, drafts and infiltration, how to chart your airflows, how to use them, window insulation, whole house HVAC

Program 3. The Electric Window - solar electricity/photovoltaic/PV, small battery charger, solar/dynamo flashlight radio, one window systems, permanent emergency capacity, battery switching and your car

Program 4. Hot and Cold Windows - windowbox heaters, passive and active ventilators, advanced airflow usage, active and passive water heating, your northernmost window, a nod towards refrigerators and low heat differential heat pumps

Program 5. The Greenhouse Window - windowsill gardens, bubbling out/bubbling in, heat storage, aquaculture, vermiculture, and ecological housekeeping, the neighborhood

Program 6. Most Windows in Town -what if everybody did it?, the economics of sunlight, systems thinking from community to region to country to world, globalization of solar physics

3. Mister Franklin's Folks

Mister Franklin’s Folks began when a small group of people decided to bring a solar fountain to the local farmers markets, swap meets, and outdoor community events and began to generate public power. Each week, they’d float the solar electric panel and pump on the water in a tub and the little fountain would splash and spray. The brighter the sunshine the higher the water would go. Children loved to turn it on and off with their shadows, jumping into and and out of the sunlight, making the water dance and themselves laugh. Older kids asked questions and so did some of the adults. “What’s it for? How does it work? Why are you doing this? So what?”

The exhibit was labeled, “Solar Fountain/Wishing Well” and some coins lay at the bottom of the tub. There was a big can labeled “Donations” on the table under the shade of an awning or umbrella where one of Franklin’s Folk sat with a portable computer and a collection of books, pamphlets, leaflets, cards, and stickers. The car, van or truck parked behind them was full of working models and public experiments, product demos and testing equipment. The computer had a wireless connection to the Internet and could print out paper copy or burn a CD. For a donation.

Each week, from Memorial Day to the week before Thanksgiving, throughout the farmers market season, they’d be there. Each week, they’d set up the solar fountain and present a different demonstration of solar ingenuity and practical power. When they said power to the people, they meant it.

The Franklin Folk said “Your south-facing window is already a solar collector and we can show you how to use it.” They provided designs and projects that began by caulking and sealing a window and ended with a complete one room HVAC and electrical system for daily and/or emergency use.

They liked the little solar/dynamo radio/flashlights that were out then. “A solar/dynamo and a set of rechargeable batteries is a perpetual source of personal AA electrical power - at least until the batteries wear out. You should have power as long as the sun keeps shining, you can turn the hand crank and the batteries hold a charge. And when the batteries die, all you have to do is go out and buy some new ones. That is, unless we’ve changed to fuel cells or flywheels by then.”

“If you have a bicycle or exercise equipment, you can probably install a generator device and provide another lifetime supply of AA power from that, too!” They had the plans so you could do it yourself and a bulk buying club so that people could save money on parts and supplies. “Let your kids make their own battery power from sunlight and a little exercise. Power your Walkman, iPod or laptop with a walk on the treadmill.”

They did simple experiments like the one with three boxes of air - three small, sealed, transparent boxes all the same size, each with a thermometer. They set them out in the sun - one box totally transparent, one box's clear sides covered in white insulation board except for the side facing the sun, the third box covered with black insulation board and one side clear to the sun. Two thermometers measured the temperature of the outdoor air, one in the sunlight and another in the shade. The Franklin Folk displayed the results of that day’s solar race with a running total on computer by their table and on the Internet with a mobile uplink.

They called themselves Mister Franklin’s Folks because, like Benjamin Franklin, they believed in ingenuity and thrift. They quoted Poor Richard:

A penny saved is two pence clear. A pin a-day is a groat a year. Save and have.

Every little makes a mickle.

A wise Man will desire no more than what he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully and leave contentedly.

Spare and have is better than spend and crave.

Like Mr Franklin, they were experimenting with electricity but instead of kites and lightning, they were looking at the sun for energy independence and building the idea of a renewable economy use by use, appliance by appliance, socket by socket, room by room.

One day, one of Mr Franklin's Folk pointed back at their car and said, "This car is now a hybrid vehicle. We modified it to charge an extra battery and can switch that battery with one in the house to run another room or part of the household. Many of us Franklin Folk are reducing our electrical bills considerably. Eventually we want to use the the grid only for back-up and you can too. With the money we save, we'll be able to install enough solar electric panels so we can begin to run the meter backwards and the electric company will have to pay us."

Other days, they had information on how to keep a pantry and food storage. Not only did they teach people how to can and salt and dry foods but they also helped organize buying clubs and bulk purchases in season to save everybody money and help the farmers in the local agricultural system steady their income and cash flow. At the farmers market they displayed maps of all the agricultural resources in the state - farmers markets, pick-your-owns, farm stands, CSAs, community gardens and farms, coops, buying clubs, community kitchens, food pantries and feeding programs. They had composting and worm farming demonstrations, taught the local community, backyard and windowsill gardeners how to lengthen their growing seasons, and encouraged the public planting of fruit trees and berry bushes throughout the city and town.

“Spare and have is better than spend and crave.”

"A wise Man will desire no more than what he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully and leave contentedly."

"Every little makes a mickle."

"A penny saved is two pence clear. A pin a-day is a groat a year. Save and have."

They quoted Poor Richard's old home truths but put them into an ecological survival context. Each week they offered practical lessons in real thrift or how to save a fortune while saving the environment, the community, and the world.

"Franklin established the oldest working cooperative in the United States, the Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss Against Fire in 1752. It was called the Hand-in-Hand, after the symbol of four hands grasping four wrists in a form commonly known as a Jacob's Chair. It was their fire mark, a sign they put on the houses they insured so that their volunteer fire department would know which houses it had responsibility for. A volunteer fire department not associated with the Hand-in-Hand would just let the building burn."

"How would Mister Franklin do business these days?" Mister Franklin's Folks asked. "Benjamin Franklin was one of the early researchers into the Gulf Stream. How would he deal with global warming and the ozone hole, let alone local pollution? He invented an odometer to set up postal routes and was the first postmaster general of the United States. What do you think he'd do with the Internet? He published the first political cartoon in North America and refused the job of writing the Declaration of Independence because he would not be edited by anyone but himself.

"Benjamin Franklin was a printer, writer, editor, newspaper, magazine, and book publisher. What do you think he would have done in the modern news environment?"

These were some of the things Mr. Franklin’s Folks brought to their table at the farmer’s market, church social, and neighborhood celebration week after week all that year.