Cell Phone Solar: What I Learned in Jamaica

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 Boston - Boston Harbor Islands

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

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

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.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

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

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

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

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.