Up to US$50,000 in grants and early-stage financing for the winning proposal

On July 3rd AIDG launched the application for its first business plan competition in Guatemala, GuateVerde. This year’s contest focuses on access to water, energy or sanitation through the use of environmentally sound technologies or services. The team with the most promising business idea will receive up to US$50,000 in grants and early-stage business financing for implementation over two years. In addition to the financial benefits, the winning team will receive: assistance in business planning, technical training and support, preparation on the best practices of enterprise management, and access to local and international professionals for guidance and support.

Applications are being accepted until August 21, 2009. Thereafter six teams will be chosen to participate in five intensive business workshops where they will gain valuable tips in refining their business plans and preparing to pitch their business ideas to compete for the grand prize on October 24, 2009.

For more information about the competition or to apply, please visit the GuateVerde website at www.guateverde.com.

Key Contest Dates:

• August 21, 2009: Deadline for submission of all business plans (5PM EST).
• September 11, 2009: Six semi-finalists announced.
• September 14 - October 16, 2009 (Saturdays only): Semi-finalists compete in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala for the grand prize.
• October 24 – 25, 2009: Team presentations and judges review.
• December 14, 2009: Winner/winning team announced.

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Three international organizations canceled $1.2 billion of Haiti’s debt Tuesday, freeing up millions of dollars each year for the deeply impoverished Caribbean nation that is beset by humanitarian crises.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund said their boards decided this week to forgive Haiti’s obligations to the two organizations, a move that triggered previously announced debt relief from the Inter-American Development Bank.

The actions erased nearly two-thirds of Haiti’s outstanding debt. As of April, Haiti owned more than $1.9 billion, according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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Duration: 3 min 34 sec

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Duration: 15 min 49 sec

La mayoría de los proyectos financiados a través del GEF SGP apuntan al fortalecimiento de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil en temas ambientales y articulan con instituciones publicas locales, departamentales y nacionales. Este video presenta algunas de las experiencias que se están desarrollando en Uruguay y que constituyen ejemplos de buenas prácticas e innovaciones a nivel local de la gestión ambiental.

Translation [via the ever-improving Google Translate]
Most projects funded through the GEF SGP are aimed at strengthening te civil society organizations on environmental issues linked to local, departmental and national public institutions. This video presents some of the experiences that are taking place in Uruguay that serve as examples of best practices and innovation for environmental management at the local level.

At 4 min 3 sec in the video, there is an example of a 13 meter long polytube biodigester on a small diary farm in Uruguay. The farming family has been able to substantially reduce the fuel costs associated with their operation, decrease their consumption of chemical fertilizers, decrease pollution around the milking stalls AND cut their green house gas emissions.

Note: The money that Comunidad Nueva Alianza used to hire XelaTeco for their first micro-hydroelectric contract came through the Small Grants Program.

Launched in 1992, SGP supports activities of non-governmental and community-based organizations in developing countries towards climate change abatement, conservation of biodiversity, protection of international waters, reduction of the impact of persistent organic pollutants and and prevention of land degradation while generating sustainable livelihoods.

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The UNDP Small Grants Program
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Maarten and Candido Install Biodigester in Tierra Colorada

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Dear Friend!

I'd like to invite you to AIDG's Annual Meeting occurring this Sunday, May 3, 2009 from 5-7PM!

Come find out what your help has allowed us to do in the first part of 2009. If you weren't able to make our holiday party in December, you don't want to miss this.

AIDG founder, Peter Haas, will give you a lively rundown of our programs in Haiti and Guatemala. On the Haiti front, we have the results from Konkou Biznis Ayiti, our very first business plan competition to commercialize biogas in Northern Haiti. From the 16 teams that entered, we have our winner. Find out how they plan to convert waste into a clean burning fuel and fertilizer this Sunday.

Our Guatemala program is currently undergoing a radical transformation. We are completely upgrading our R&D facility so that we can better design technologies that meet the needs of underserved communities. These changes will also allow us to collaborate with more university groups and businesses that share our mission.

The AIDG team in Guatemala is preparing for a 2nd business plan competition to take place this fall. The focus will be water, energy, and sanitation technologies.

So come join us on Sunday. Let us show you some of what we've been able to achieve with your dedicated support.

Keeping it Green,

Cat Laine

Details

Location: Weston Community Center, 20 Alphabet Lane, Weston, MA 02493
Date: Sunday, May 3rd
Time: 5PM - 7PM

Light refreshments will be served.

Snapshots from the field

The 5 finalist teams for AIDG's biogas business plan competition, Konkou Biznis Ayiti. Over the course of one week, these teams went through an intensive series of training sessions to help them refine their business concept. We'll be announcing the contest winner at the end of the week.

SakisDecossard of Own Energy, Peter Haas and Catherine Laine of AIDG after all long day's training session with the contest's finalists. I want to give a special thanks to Sakis, who traveled down to Haiti from NYC to serve as one of our judges in the competition.

The new AIDG compound: 3 story office and training space. Not shown: intern housing, garden, storage and workshop space.

AIDG Guatemala and a visiting mechanical engineering team from Michigan State University. The university team was working on a novel idea for solar refrigeration. Their ultimate aim is to improve vaccine delivery in areas with poor access to electricity and modern refrigeration technologies.

Jeb Gutelius and AIDG Board Member Benny Lee on a site visit to La Fe in Guatemala. In 2007, XelaTeco repaired La Fe's 75 kW hydroelectric plant that serves the community and powers their agricultural machinery. The transmission lines to the right of the power house (seen above) were installed by XelaTeco this year as Phase II of the project. Phase III will be further improvement and expansion of the minigrid to homes of the community's 100 families.

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4 of the 20 images that make up the photo-essay.

Deforested mountains funneled Tropical Storm Hannah’s rainfall directly into Gonaives, flooding the town of 350,000

Frantz Samedi holds the lifeless body of his 5 year old daughter, Tamasha Jean, who died when Hurricane Ike’s flood waters swept children and the elderly from their homes in the small Haitian town of Cabaret

Shadows of children dance across a small tent city - temporary shelter for homeless families - in Cabaret

Mardoshe Thelisma cries at a funeral mass for her cousin and 90 others, who were crushed to death when the 3 story College La Promesse collapsed in Petionville outside Port-au-Prince

View the slideshow and listen to Farrell’s commentary. His voice quavers with the emotion of the experience. [Miami Herald]

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Here are some choice tweets from the past week. Some abbreviations have been expanded for readability and to not incur the wrath of grammarians.

1. After an intense week at our business plan/biogas workshop we’re at the penultimate day. We’re having the teams practice their pitches. Yesterday
2. GPS coordinates for our Haiti office: 19 45.816 -72 12.021. One of our composting toilets in Shada 19 44.896 -72 12.274. * 7:48 AM Apr 1st
3. Haiti needs jobs. With 900,000 youths coming into the job market in next five years, dismal prospects are the main threat to stability. [NYT] http://bit.ly/RvDn 8:04 AM Mar 31st
4. Reading comments in NYTimes story about Haiti [ http://tinyurl.com/d7k5mb ], it’s clear that ppl don’t know many factors influencing family size in dev countries :( 4:48 PM Mar 29th
5. The most lively conversations we had yesterday with the finalists were about corruption and debt vs equity. 3:58 PM Mar 29th
6. @nytimeskristof just did a great piece on our friends SOIL, an NGO that does composting toilets in Cap Haitien http://bit.ly/EEk4l 8:27 AM Mar 29th
7. First day AIDG Konkou 8 hours of lecture ahead, turn on acer, no boot, bricked bios, no backup USB , thank god for core knowledge and chalk! 7:37 PM Mar 28th
8. Not sure why the UN peacekeepers are walking around with guns at the ready today. The city seems otherwise quite calm. They’re making people nervous. 8:15 PM Mar 27th
9. All 5 finalists in our 1st comp in Haiti were men. We need to try harder next time around to recruit female entrepreneurs.2:37 PM Mar 27th
10. Dorit Leavitt in Guate: AIDG’s 2nd business plan competition is in the works in Guatemala. The theme is: water, energy, and sanitation!

Follow us on twitter

*Note: Satellite data for Cap Haitien is 2 years old so our projects will not be visible. :(

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Open source treadle pump [Sustainable Design Update]

I don’t know how we managed to put together such an incredible set of projects. Much credit goes to the student teams that worked nearly around the clock when in Xela.

Ben Connor Barrie and Jeff Tenza ran the show from our end. Karen and I had work in Nicaragua for much of the time so Ben and Jeff were on their own with the student teams. Ben started working with the student design teams for a few months prior to the build so he was familiar with the technologies and the materials needed for success. He also speaks Spanish and has had two years teaching experience with Teach for America.

Just as we got to Guatemala Ben commented “God I’m glad I don’t have to drive in Guatemala” as our driver cut off a truck and then was cut off by a chicken bus in rush hour traffic. The very next day we borrowed the AIDG truck with Jose Ordoñez to shop for materials. As we headed for the truck Jose gave Ben the keys and said Ben was driving. About half the student team from U of M went along for the experience. We ended up with 6 meters of steel on the roof in rush hour traffic hitting a round about - Jose giving directions in Spanish and Ben cursing in at least three languages. We all made it back ok.

University of Michigan BLUELab Team at AIDG-Guatemala

The BLUELab team has been working on an open source treadle pump design since the start of school 2008. They got as far as a prototype or proof of concept model in their workshop, drew up incredibly detailed and easy to read documents and arrived in Guatemala after a daylong delay due to weather in the US. They also had to cut their visit short by a day on the other end due to flight scheduling problems.

The BLUELab team made up for lost time by being very well organized. They formed working groups for each component of the assembly. The reality of building in the developing world was made clear early when certain types of plastic weren’t available, pipe sizes were different from standards in the US and steel parts were also different from standards we have in the shop back home. Much was redesigned on the fly.

BLUELab worked all day at the AIDG workshop (thank you very much!) and then reviewed the next day’s assignments over a late dinner every night. They were successful in proving their prototype works on the last day of the build, at the last hour, with their bags already packed and their shuttle waiting.

BLUELab posted their work on their website and within 3 days NGOs from Africa were already asking for copies of their drawings. We plan on posting the revised design on the ATC website at the end of the semester and BLUELab is considering returning to Guatemala to build the new design.

Guatemala is probably not the place where treadle pumps will make a good business sense, but it is a great place to learn what it is like to build with limited resources. The experience for the student team, working with people from Guatemala and living embedded in a new culture will change how they view their work.

The MSU Refrigerator project started as an idea “from out of the blue” when I was at XelaTeco one day in the middle of a hail storm. I figured if solar forces could freeze rain then they could be used to chill vaccines. Three years later we had a team of Engineers from Michigan State University in Xela working on a solar refrigerator.

The MSU team is a group of students working on their Capstone Design Project, a senior design course that brings together all they have learned in engineering school in one final big design. Working with Dr. Craig Somerton we hand selected a group of students with the right skill sets to create and build a solar refrigerator using only locally available materials.

The refrigerator uses activated charcoal (made from coconuts) and ethanol to cool or freeze an insulated box. The MSU team calculated the amounts of materials needed, the surface area required for solar input and the surface area needed to condense the ethanol from gas back into a liquid form. They prototyped their project in East Lansing, MI and then hit the road to Guatemala with drawings and specifications in hand.

The MSU team gathered some of their materials on bicycle but did use the AIDG truck to move some heavy steel parts. They had to settle for extra strong steel due to a lack of steel at the gauge they had specified in their design. At the end of the first day they took several parts of their project back to their hostel and continued to work in the street out front to keep the project on schedule.

On Thursday the design was complete and it chilled the cooler box to just above 1 degree Fahrenheit. They designed the refrigerator to run continuously without having to attend to it using a very clever arrangement of the solar collector, condenser and evaporator. Based on our work in Guatemala we have a new design idea that may reduce the price considerably if we can make our own activated charcoal and change several components of the design from copper to steel. We also found evidence of a source of methanol in Xela. If we switch the refrigerant from ethanol to methanol the cooler should reach about -10 degrees F using all the same components.

We (ATC) are now working with student teams from 7 schools with more schools asking to join the collaborative. We are, at the point, where we have to balance our commitments with our capacity to investigate, invent and create good designs that are in the range of student design teams. We can support multi-year projects with different faculty sponsors and different student teams.

We have a long list of potential design projects, some are very complicated and some are the simple technologies that can make a difference at low cost. ATC is starting two projects with Business students this year. We are creating business plans manufacture and sell some of our technologies based on local market conditions.

If anyone is interested in our designs, they are all going to be online at www.apptechdesign.org by the end of this semester.

I am going to upload some of the spring 2009 photos to my Flickr account.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsbarrie/sets/72157616172867614/

-John Barrie

Related posts:
Tech Update: MSU Teams build solar fridge at AIDG-Guatemala
Low cost solar water heater for Guatemala: AIDG and UC Berkeley research team partner up
Universal LED Circuit Board Project
Video: EWB-SF: Prototyping low cost wind turbine at AIDG Guatemala

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Mechanical Engineering team from Michigan State University at AIDG Guatemala working on a solar refrigerator

With unreliable or nonexistent electricity infrastructures, rural regions of developing countries often have high vaccine spoilage rates. With no way to keep vaccines cold over an extended period, these medicines sometimes must be administered within 48 hours from the time they’re put into a vaccine carrier for delivery.

On March 8, six mechanical engineering seniors from Michigan State University arrived at the AIDG Guatemala workshop as part of their work to address this problem. Working with the Appropriate Technology Design Collaborative, our goal is to develop an affordable, robust refrigerator that uses passive solar energy to maintain temperatures from 2°C to 8°C. The end goal is a set of clear manufacturing plans that will be posted online in an open-source format, free for anyone to access.

Filing Steel

Building the solar collector

Since we wouldn’t have electricity to power our fridge, previous Michigan State teams directed us away from compression refrigeration and pointed us to adsorption refrigeration. The Internet is stacked with academic knowledge on solar adsorption refrigeration, but our team has the goal of developing a system and assembly instructions that can be used by anybody. Our adsorption refrigerator design uses passive solar energy rather than electricity and has no moving parts. But before the adsorption process can be understood, it is necessary to understand the basics of refrigeration. All fridges operate on the principal that a liquid boiling to a gas takes heat away from its surroundings. It is also important to know that a liquid can be made to boil at a very low temperature by altering the pressure. While water boils at 100°C at atmospheric pressure, it can be boiled at 0°C under a very high vacuum.

A refrigerator operates by allowing the refrigerant to boil at temperatures as low as the desired cold space temperature. Eventually, the evaporated refrigerant must be condensed back to a liquid to repeat the cycle for continued cooling. While a typical home refrigerator relies on an electric condenser to turn the gaseous refrigerant back to our liquid, our system uses chemical processes to drive the evaporation and condensation of the refrigerant.

CAD drawing of solar fridge design

Previous Michigan State teams working on this project directed us to use ethanol as a refrigerant, since it is almost universally available and nontoxic. While pure ethanol may be difficult to find in developing countries, liquor with high alcohol content can be used in its place. As our ethanol boils, it is adsorbed by activated charcoal, a porous solid that is often used in fish tank and drinking water filters to remove impurities. In our refrigerator, the activated carbon allows the system to maintain a constant pressure as the ethanol evaporates. When the sun heats our solar collector and activated charcoal bed in the middle of the day, the heat causes the release of the adsorbed ethanol. The raised pressure and condenser cooling allow the ethanol to return to a liquid state so it can be evaporated again to cool the refrigerator.

Our trip to Guatemala was intended to be a learning experience – an opportunity for our team to understand what materials were available in developing areas and what challenges would slow manufacturing. The team faced issues with material availability, manufacturing capabilities and power outages, but was still able to complete the build in less than three days. Our final product uses a simple cooler fitted to a system of copper pipes and connected to a steel solar collector, held in a wood frame. With just one day to test the device, we recorded our lowest temperature at 1.3°C.

Back in East Lansing, Michigan, we still have several weeks of work to refine the design, complete testing and compile our final instructions for manufacturing. There is also significant room for this design to evolve, especially in regards to cost. Currently, the device costs in the range of $400 to $500 for one-unit manufacturing. One area for substantial cost reduction is the activated charcoal. While the team currently buys activated charcoal at a cost of $200 per fridge, it can be made simply by burning coconut shells in a controlled environment.

Michigan State University Team and AIDG crew

The solar adsorption refrigerator project is sponsored by the Appropriate Technology Design Collaborative with the financial support of the Lear Corporation and Chrysler Foundation. The project is part of the Michigan State University Mechanical Engineering senior capstone class. The spring 2009 team members are Nabeel Aslam, Kevin McPhail, Ryan McPhee, Brent Rowland and Eric Tingwall, guided by faculty advisor Dr. Craig W. Somerton.

- Eric Tingwall

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Hi everyone. I’m back in Xela, home of AIDG’s offices and research facility in Central America. Big things are happening down here. This January we moved into a beautiful new compound. Rising above the neighboring buildings, the new office resembles a pagoda. Its red corrugated roof flanking three stories of golden clapboard walls is something of an enigma in a neighborhood dominated by low concrete block houses. In addition to much needed additional office space, we now have a new fabrication shop, electronics and water lab and, under construction, housing to accommodate several interns and visiting researchers. The new office is full of light and the staff and interns that work here are noticeably happier with the new work space. In what can be chilly mornings in a city perched at roughly 7000 ft., it’s nice to work in a place where the brilliant morning sun comes in through the windows and warms the space.

I have returned to Xela to continue my work on the pico-hydro system that I field tested in La Florida last year. Pico-hydro systems are small hydroelectric generators that produce less than one kilowatt of power. We are looking at using the generator to provide basic lighting, cell phone charging and ultra violet water purification in under served communities. Housed in a five gallon bucket, and employing a modified car alternator driven by a turbine, the generator promises the potential of cheap clean energy to those without access to the electricity grid.

Pico-hydro test in La Florida in 2008

The Permanent Magnet Alternator

Last year, we established that the generator was viable as a single point power source that could be installed quickly with limited resources and could produce consistent power with modest water usage. Still unresolved were issues of cost, longevity of service and overall performance for electrical output. The generator was built using a rather expensive modified GM alternator produced in the States for the home brew wind turbine market. This modified alternator, called a permanent magnet alternator (PMA) produces energy at low RPM’s and works well in small-scale hydroelectric systems. In addition to the price, (more that $300.00 U.S.), the alternator would have to be shipped to its destination country, adding additional cost. The PMA was by far the generator’s most expensive component and the only element in the system that would need to be imported, so we looked to it to reduce the generator’s overall cost.

My solution was to modify the Nippo Denso alternator produced for Toyota’s 22R engine. They key was using low-tech mods that could be cheaply and easily reproduced in a basic machine shop. The Nippo Denso alternator, found in most Toyota pickup trucks and many sedans in developing countries, might just be the most common alternator in the world. They are often shipped to developing countries to be rebuilt for the market in the US and other developed countries. Where in the States these alternators are simply replaced with rebuilt alternators when they fail, in developing countries there is extensive infrastructure to rebuild them. They are available in quantity in Guatemala and are cheap.

My design for the Toyota based PMA uses only the alternator casing and the stator (the wire coils that surround the rotor inside the alternator). For the conversion, the rotor is completely rebuilt with powerful neodymium magnets and the stator is rewound with thinner gage wire. Non-functioning Toyota alternators can be had for about $20.00 US in Guatemala if bought in bulk. The magnets are the only part of the new alternator that may need to be imported.

Left: Rebuilt permanent magnet rotor. Right: Toyota rotor.

Toyota based permanent magnet alternator

Our new hydro test bench

Last year we lacked the facilities to do extensive testing of the PMA and could only determine that, yes, it worked and that it produced energy at low RPM’s. But we couldn’t determine which gauge windings of the stator would produce the most power given the bucket generator’s RPM ranges. We needed more controlled study conditions, particularly as field tests were difficult to repeat (distance to test site, variability of water flow, etc.).

This past month, we set up both a hydro and a PMA test bench. The hydro test bench simulates the head and water flow rate that determine the output of a small hydroelectric system. By varying the head and flow in the test bench, we can simulate the various conditions under which the bucket generator operates and rate its performance under different loads.

Bucket generator connected to hydro test bench

We can’t directly measure the RPMs of the bucket generator when it is hooked up to the hydro test bench, but we can estimate this number using the PMA test bench. Simply put, we find the number of RPMs in the PMA test bench that replicates the current produced by our bucket generator in the hydro test bench, and thereby get an estimate of the bucket generator RPMs. Using the PMA test bench we can only investigate which windings offer us the highest current at the appropriate RPMs for the system.

PMA test bench

Direct comparison of the GM and Toyota PMAs is difficult due to differences in configuration, size and layout of the 2 systems. That said we were able to determine that the Toyota PMA offers performance in the same general range of the GM system and at a fraction of the cost. If manufactured in bulk, the Toyota PMA would come in at around $120.00 U.S. and the entire bucket generator could cost about $160.00 U.S.

Currently, we are trying to determine which wind of the Toyota PMA will give us the maximum current at the RPM ranges of the bucket generator system. At our maximum available head on the test bench, about 90’, we were able to produce over 1,200 RPMs and 90 watts. We expect to get more than 100 watts in the field at slightly higher heads. We don’t know yet what the maximum output will be.

This spring, we’ll be installing at least two of the bucket generators in Haiti to power ultra violet water purification equipment. A portion of the funding for this project was generously provided by St Peter’s Church in Weston. AIDG’s Haiti office is partnering with local NGOs, including our good friends at SOIL, to address the lack of clean potable water in their service areas. Each ultra violet purification device draws about 30 watts. With the generator, we expect to be able to power three or more UV devices at 100’ of head and 50 gallons a minute of flow. Currently, sites surveys are being conducted in Haiti to determine head and flow conditions and find suitable sites that provide year round consistent water. These long term test sites will provide data on performance as well as service and maintenance needs of the system.

Sam Redfield
AIDG
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

Related posts:
Sam Redfield on Pico-hydro at La Florida
Parts List for Five Gallon Bucket Hydroelectric Generator

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