Email from Will to Luke, which Luke forwarded to us:
Dear Luke,
Thankyou for your time today and last night.
We would be delighted to help in providing power solutions for the laptops throughout the African Schools.
I have a number of questions:
Do you wish to run the Servers etc from a 12v supply or a 240/110v AC supply?
Are you looking to charge the laptops or just run them directly during daylight hours?
How many hours will they be used for a day?
Do you require additional power for lighting within the school?
Operational times of the building?
Suggested budget for 500w/hour system?
Operational hours of the laptop once charged?
PV with the relevant battery storage and charge controllers etc is a very expensive solution.
Deep cycle batteries are costly and their charge capacity and life span are seriously reduced in high temperatures.
Wind turbines cannot be relied upon to guarantee power. Nature will not provide a sufficient wind speed in all areas for even an hour 7 days a week. To start putting in systems with 4-5 days storage would be cost prohibitive.
Hydrid solar/wind comes back to cost.
Our smaller unit for individual huts providing power for the lights a radio and a phone charger could be adapted to charge the lap top at night. This could then be taken to school in the morning. This would probably provide the most secure wire free option in the class rooms. A single PV panel could then run the server. However, this is way too expensive to roll out on a large scale at present.
We have an adapted PMG that is virtually resistance free. This could be turned by hand for an hour to store 1.5KW. My next door neighbours 5 year old son can do this. This could be adapted onto a merry go round and 2-3 children playing on this for 2 hours a day would easily store 3KW of power for use.
Modified generators running on crops grown within the village could be another solution. The only drawback is the 3-4 month lead time for the crops. As you know we are building upto 1.6MW units running on Rape seed oil, Palm oil etc.
I prefer the home units - this not only achieves lighting within the huts, allowing for an extended family life within the evenings it also allows communication for people living outside the village and access to information from outside the village via the radio. This is a very expensive option unfortunately.
The only other practical cheap solution would be the hand cranked or merry go round.
I trust this may be of some use to you.
I wish you the best of luck in your exciting projects.
If I can be of any further help please do not hesitate to contact me.
Just as an aside, I find it rather ironic that the Dutch are trying to negotiate crops to be grown in Africa to deliver CO2 neutral power for them (50MW). Surely there must be a budget that would allow villages to have their own smaller communal generators and allow them to earn an income from selling the rest of the fuel to the western world. These would also provide the power for irrigation, laptops etc etc.
Kind regards,
Will Dowson
MD Vawtech Ltd
www.profitablegroup.com
Our Response:
Hi Will,
I'm Owen Derby, part of a roughly 8-person MIT undergraduate team working on a proposal to submit to the One Laptop Per Child Africa Movement. We are currently working with Luke Dolby from the NGO Build A School to work out the details of our project. As you know, the issue of power is essential to our being able to deploy these laptops. Luke sent us your questions regarding power, and our answers are attached (here!). Our answers are the collective wisdom of our team and some members of OLPC (specifically Seth and Brian Johnson) who have more knowledge and past experience about power in Africa.
First, an OLPC page on power which should be helpful: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Battery_and_power
I would like to respond to your suggestion of a mechanical charging system (merry-go-round,hand crank, etc). OLPC has already designed and built and tested several mechanical solutions, all of which failed for a very simple reason. No one can spend an hour and a half turning a crank each time a battery needs charging. It's tiring even for an adult, let alone children. The merry go round is an interesting idea, but again would probably be very tiring (could also be expensive depending on its design) and I fear the children would tire of it. So OLPC strongly advise against such solutions, since they've already tried them. As for electrical solutions at the child's home, that could cause a lot more problems than it creates, as there are many more homes in the town than just ones with children receiving a laptop. It would also require a lot more of our time, since we'd have to set up close to 100 such systems, versus just one if it's located at the school. And we'll need to have power at the school to charge the laptops and run the server anyways (assuming the school has access to internet). So I think our best solution is some sort of power generation system at the school.
Below, I have included more information about OLPC for your reference. Again, please see the attachment for the answers to your questions, and please let me know if you have any more questions or if there is anything else I can do to help you. Thank you again for taking the time to advise us and Luke on this critical issue.
OLPC:
OLPCorps is sponsoring 100 teams of university students to distribute XO laptops in rural areas of Africa to children ages 6-12. Each team receives 100 laptops, one server, and a 10,000 USD stipend to cover travel and lodging costs. Teams must submit proposals detailing how they will work with the children, who will be the local partner (a non-governmental organization), and how they will ensure the laptops have a lasting effect on the community. These laptops are agents of change and, by providing education, can help children achieve their potential. Please see http://laptop.org/en/ and http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPCorps_Africa for more information about OLPC.
Thank you,
Owen Derby
MIT OLPC Team
Email: olpcorps@mit.edu
Skype: mit.olpcorps
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