Rachel Pott
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Archive for solar

Photovoltaic Solar Electricity Potential in Africa
Posted by Rachel Pott 
· January 12, 2015 
· No Comments

Solar Panels That Can Self-Clean

Published on Innovate Development.

For a region with abundant sunlight – an average of over 320 days per year – the solar resource potential across sub-Saharan Africa remains largely untapped. This potential is paired with enormous energy needs that leave over 600 million without electricity. In response, emerging technologies aim to make solar power development infinitely more feasible.

While solar installations are mostly located in arid regions, high levels of dust and contaminant particles in the atmosphere and the prevalence of dust storms leave deposits that accrue over time on the surface of solar panels. The dust can reduce effectiveness by up to 35%, and even up to 60% after a powerful dust storm. For a single solar panel, spraying desalinated, distilled water – the industry norm – is a simple solution to this build up. However, when water is a scarce resource, such as it is across sub-Saharan Africa, and there are millions of square feet of solar panels, this solution is too expensive to be practical; US$58 million and 420 million litres of water could be wasted over the lifetime of a 100 megawatt installation.1

A technology is currently in development by a team of engineers at Boston University that uses an electrostatic field to repel dust and particles on solar panels. Under the direction of Malay Mazumder, College of Engineering research professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Mark Horenstein, professor of electrical and computer engineering, the team has developed a transparent electrodynamic system (EDS): a self-cleaning technology that is either embedded in the device or onto a transparent film adhered to the panel. Using a small amount of electricity, the electrodes are charged to 1200 volts to create an electrostatic field that lifts the dust. By using three different layers and alternating the order that they are turned on, waves across the surface levitate the particles and cause them to dip and rise to the edges as the charge fluctuates. It takes only seconds for at least 90% of the dust to be swept away.

Solar Panel

Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

After successfully testing prototypes at Abengoa Solar and Sandia National Laboratories, the next step is to scale the project to industrial-sized models and ensure that the system is resistant to all weather challenges. The group is working to identify a manufacturing partner to produce the panels with EDS technology, after which they believe a product will be on the market within two years. The project has received funding from NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Mass Clean Energy Council.2 While the project is currently focused in the U.S. Midwest, there is no denying its applicability across sub-Saharan Africa.

A shortage of electricity is considered to be one of Africa’s greatest development challenges. Seventy percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is without access to electricity, and this rises close to 92% in rural regions. While the U.S. has a generation capacity of 3360 megawatts per million people, sub-Saharan Africa has only 91 megawatts.3

However, there is visible movement in the direction of solar energy as a means to increase electricity generation, which could help solve this imbalance. The World Energy Outlook estimates that across sub-Saharan Africa, almost half of the growth in electricity generation from 2014-2040 will come from renewables, including solar.4 As the price of solar cells drops – from 1992 to 2013, the price per watt dropped from $5.70 to $0.65 – this is increasingly viable.5

In 2013, President Obama launched Power Africa, which has the long-term aim of doubling access to cleaner, efficient and reliable electricity across the region. Lighting Africa, a joint program of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, accelerates the market for off-grid lighting products, and has since facilitated access to solar-powered lighting for over 7.7 million across sub-Saharan Africa. A recent increase in high profile solar power investments from the venture capital community represent the potential for a shift in the market.6

Innovative ideas that rework technologies to better match their surroundings increase accessibility and are a step towards reducing energy poverty and increasing the share of renewables in the energy sector.

To keep up with this project, follow Abengoa Solar on Twitter: @Abengoa.

  1. http://www.scidev.net/global/technology/news/tech-take-off-developing-nations-2015-solar-water.html#sthash.iBH0PGKZ.dpuf ↩
  2. http://www.bu.edu/today/2014/self-cleaning-system-boosts-efficiency-of-solar-panels/ ↩
  3. http://www.usaid.gov/powerafrica/about-power-africa/infographic; http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1538&context=sdlp ↩
  4. http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2014/141112_WEO_FactSheets.pdf ↩
  5. http://www.thisisafricaonline.com/Development2/Thinking-beyond-the-grid ↩
  6. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solarcity-leads-7m-round-in-off-grid-solar-firm ↩

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Categories : Innovate Development
Tags : Africa, electricity, off-the-grid, solar, solar energy, Sub-Saharan Africa
Ebola Virus
Posted by Rachel Pott 
· January 8, 2015 
· No Comments

A Portable, Solar-Powered, 15-Minute Ebola Test

Posted on Innovate Development.

Fifteen minutes. The time it takes you to go through your emails. The ideal length of a power nap. The time required for an Ebola diagnosis?

A 15 minute point-of-care diagnostic test is being trialled at the Senegal Ebola treatment centre in Conakry, Guinea, led by Director Dr. Amadou Alpha Sall. The test has the potential to dramatically speed up the diagnosis of Ebola cases – it is six times faster than similar tests currently in use. With quicker identification and detection, medical staff can isolate and treat patients sooner, preventing transmission of the virus and increasing the patient’s chance of survival.

A fast diagnosis also creates space in hospitals and clinics, a priority for both Ebola patients and all others seeking healthcare. The outbreak has drastically reduced available space for children to receive vaccinations or be treated for common illnesses, or for pregnant women to safely deliver their babies.1

There are additional distinct advantages of this test over those currently in use. It is deployed in a mobile suitcase laboratory – ideal for remote field hospitals and low-resource settings. The kit includes a solar panel, a power pack and a results reader the size of a small laptop. The reagents are in a cold chain independent pellet form – in other words, they can be used and transported at room temperature. Meanwhile, current diagnoses take several hours and require specialized equipment and laboratories.
Ebola Test - Lab TestingAt the Ebola treatment centre in Conakry, it will be determined whether the reagents are safe and effective to use with blood and saliva samples by running the test alongside existing methods. Similar to these current diagnostic methods, the test detects the genetic material of the virus.2 The centre itself is managed by Médicins Sans Frontières, the Institut National de Santé Publique, and the Projet de Fièvres Hémorragiques de Guinée.

The test was developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Arbovirus and Viral Hemorrhagic Fever at the Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD) in Senegal. The IPD is a private, non-profit foundation that works to prevent and treat diseases, mainly those of infectious origin. It counts among its current and previous scientists 10 Nobel laureates.3

The test will be a welcome development in Guinea, a country that has already had lost 1654 people and had 2630 infected with Ebola as of the end of 2014. According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the worldwide death toll reached 7708, with 19729 infections last year.4

The test is one of six projects co-funded by the Wellcome Trust and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), under the Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) programme. To help combat the Ebola outbreak, R2HC launched an emergency research call for projects that can improve the effectiveness of the response to the current outbreak, while drawing lessons for future communicable disease outbreaks.5 The projects are managed by Enhancing Learning & Research for Humanitarian Assistance (ELRHA) and have been provided with £1.8 million in funding, with £500 000 specifically for diagnostic test.6

For more information on this and the other projects within the RCHC programme, visit the ELRHA website.

  1. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/even-west-africans-who-dont-catch-ebola-are-being-hurt-disease-180953090/?no-ist ↩
  2. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/28/15-minute-ebola-test-guinea-africa ↩
  3. http://www.pasteur.fr/en/institut-pasteur/about-us ↩
  4. http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/case-counts.html ↩
  5. http://elrha.org/work/R2HC ↩
  6. http://www.ukcds.org.uk/resources/ebola-research-database ↩

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Categories : Innovate Development
Tags : Africa, Disease, Ebola, Guinea, off-the-grid, solar, WHO
Solar Suitcase in Hospital
Posted by Rachel Pott 
· November 27, 2014 
· No Comments

Solar Suitcases to Light the World

Published on Innovate Development.

Over 1.4 billion people – nearly 20% of the world’s population – are without access to electricity, while an additional 1 billion have access only to unreliable, intermittent electricity networks.1 This scarcity is especially felt in sub-Saharan Africa where the electrification rate is only 30.5% and one in four health facilities have a reliable supply of electricity.2 However, the non-profit WE CARE Solar has created a portable off-grid solar electric system, the Solar Suitcase, which is providing dependable electricity to clinics, schools and emergency medical centres to help change this reality.

Solar Suitcase

© WE CARE Solar

In the developing world, innovation often comes out of necessity – tackling a problem that the innovator wasn’t previously aware existed.3 When Dr. Laura Stachel was in Nigeria in 2008, working to understand why so many women were dying in childbirth, she realized that one of the main factors had nothing to do with healthcare. At night, a lack of reliable electricity was forcing health care workers to turn away patients or to work by touch under the insufficient light of cell phones, flashlights or candles. In Malawi, for example, many clinics expect women to bring candles and matches to the delivery of their child. With nearly one in seven pregnancies having some form of complication, the lack of electricity often has tragic results. Inspired to action by what she saw, Laura and her husband, solar energy educator Hal Aronson, developed a solar electric system – the Solar Suitcase – to provide highly efficient medical lighting and power for mobile communication and small medical devices.
The Solar Suitcase was designed to withstand harsh conditions, while remaining exceptionally simple to use – the system turns on with a single switch. Small enough to mount on the wall as a cabinet, the basic unit includes two 20 watt solar panels, a 14 amp-hour battery, a 15A charge controller, two headlamps, phone and battery chargers, and the installation hardware. It is designed for expansion and can accommodate up to 200 watts of solar panels and a 100 amp-hour sealed battery. The lighting system lasts for 70,000 hours – that’s 10 to 20 years of operation. The basic system costs $1545, but WE CARE Solar provides it along with training, installation and transport for free through grant funding and support from sponsors and partner organizations. These systems are saving lives and reducing strain on healthcare workers.

Solar Suitcase in Hospital

© WE CARE Solar

While originally designed for maternity clinics, the breadth of the project has expanded to a range of medical and humanitarian settings, such as for medical relief teams in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Most recently, 15 were sent to Ebola checkpoints and holding centres in Liberia to assist health care workers. As of November 2014, 900 Solar Suitcases have been assembled and sent to 25 countries across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Central America. Regional programs are in place in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Malawi and the Philippines, with expansions for Ethiopia and Tanzania in 2015.4 Maternal deaths have decreased by as much as 70% in some cases.5 For one community, an outbreak of cholera meant that the Solar Suitcase was on every night for a month. For the first time ever, not one person died – 122 patients were saved, when in the past, the mortality rate was 50%.6

WE CARE Solar is also looking beyond the provision of physical resources to educational programs and community ownership. In the field, they often see broken solar electric systems, due in part to improper training and installation. To avoid this, when demand rose beyond the staff’s capacity to personally deliver each suitcase, they trained 14 women to be Solar Ambassadors, who could then train locals on how to use and install the systems. As well, the organization founded We Share Solar, an educational program that teaches students to build Solar Suitcases that will then be donated to non-profits working with schools and orphanages that lack reliable electricity.

Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, may have said it best when she called the Solar Suitcase “sunshine saving lives”.7

 

For more information, see the WE CARE Solar website or visit their Facebook page.

  1. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourwork/environmentandenergy/focus_areas/sustainable-energy/universal-access.html ↩
  2. http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/resources/energydevelopment/accesstoelectricity/; http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/2/14-020214/en/ ↩
  3. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/dec/09/innovate-die-fresh-thinking-change-world?CMP=twt_gu ↩
  4. http://wecaresolar.org/ ↩
  5. http://www.nature.com/news/policy-bring-sustainable-energy-to-the-developing-world-1.15034 ↩
  6. http://www.powertheworld.org/cause/solar-suitcase-uganda/ ↩
  7. http://wecaresolar.org/ ↩

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Categories : Innovate Development
Tags : Light, light-source, lighting, off-the-grid, solar, solar energy

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