As rich countries struggle to reduce the amount of gigawatts they consume, residents of places like Karagwe in Tanzania can't plug a single light into a single plug to draw a single kilowatt.
With no grid infrastructure coming to the region anytime soon, an American company and an African NGO are teaming up to bring light to the region by charging battery-powered lights with a modded recumbent bicycle generator from Nepal.
Their idea is simple: a charging station operator pedals the generator for about six hours to charge a 12-volt battery. This big battery charges 8 to 10 smaller battery/LED light gadgets, which are then rented to people now using kerosene lamps to see at night, an approach with serious health and safety risks.
"We put these charging stations in throughout the district, as a sort of grid, then each of these charging stations supports around 200 lights that serve as a rental center within that area," says Dissigno'sGary Zieff, a former Shell employee turned sustainability advocate.
The pedal-power project is part of a growing movement to create what is called appropriate technology for the developing world. Instead of trying to shoehorn tech designed for people with access to cheap, grid electrical power, this new brand of engineers and companies are trying to develop solutions for people living on a few dollars a day.
Companies, like Potenco or d.light design, and non-profits like Engineers Without Borders are all coming up with new ways of bringing accessible power and lighting to poor areas of the globe.
It sounds easy, but it's difficult to get first-world engineers to understand the limitations and needs in these far-flung locations. For that local knowledge, companies like Dissigno turn to non-governmental organizations operating in the area.
"We're a bunch of white guys in California. what do we know about the problems of living and trying to survive in Tanzania's rural areas?" Zieff said. "We really rely heavily on our NGO partner."
KADERES, Dissigno's NGO partner, has established medical clinics and a microfinance center in Karagwe.
Dissigno implemented a version of the pedal power project in Haiti last year, which now rents out about 75 lights. After that success, they won a $200,000 grant from The World Bank to expand the project to Tanzania.
The new program begins in September with the installation of one generator and 100 4-volt lights from Australia's Barefoot Power.
After some initial testing, the organizations are planning to put in a set of generators in January 2009, said Zieff's partner, Dave Williams.
"We chose the pedal generator is that it's really simple to build and operate," said Williams. "They can go in really fast and really easily and almost anybody can use them."
Pedal powered projects have had success in off-grid locations around the world. Back as 2003, another duo of white guys from California, Lee Thorn and Lee Felsenstein, helped a Laotian village connect to the Internet via a bike-like generator. Shareware Science even provides free DIY plans for bike generators.
Hooking up some metal pedals to a battery might not seem as elegant or advanced as a photovoltaic set-up or wind turbine, but Williams argues those aren't not the metrics on which it should be measured.
"What we're focused on here is efficacy. How effective are we at putting technology into people's hands?" he said. "The small battery pack with these little Chinese batteries can be terribly inefficient but still effective."
Dissigno's principals hope that the charging centers will become hubs of commerce in the community, providing light and hope for further economic growth.
"This is really the first rung of that energy ladder for our marketplace," Williams said. "This is the first time they've had power."
Full disclosure: I'm working with Engineers Without Borders' SF chapter's Appropriate Design Technology Team on a project to create a rock crusher for a water filtration NGO in the Philippines.
Images: 1. Dissigno in Haiti, courtesy of John Dickey. 2. Courtesy of Barefoot Power.
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