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Guatemala

Nicaragua

Brad Burkhartzmeyer is doing volunteer work for a group called Xela Tecnologia in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala to engineer and install renewable energy systems. Below are his reports. email Brad with your questions and comments. btburk@harbornet.com

   

     

 

This is the third report.

   You'd have thought Apollo 13 just lifted off the way we stared at each other and then simultaneously let loose with a whoop and a holler. Alfredo even tossed his hat in the air. Then we just stared at each other for a few seconds while the power of what just happened sunk in. It had all started easy enough on the steep slope where we are to install a six inch pvc pipe to channel the water down the mountainside . . . . . I was awed and speechless at the power released when mass and gravity combine to have their way. I was already feeling small, looking down the mountain perched under the shade of a fifteen foot tall fern. . . Let let me back up for a second. This is our second week at the farm on the Pacific slope side of the volcanoes that cut across Guatemala. It's a warm, tropical place with lots of colorful birds and noisy biting insects perched on rugged terrain far from the power grid, sewer connections, garbage service, or potable water. The folks here divert a river that runs across their land to get water and have plans to use this water to generate electricity for the forty families who live on and work the farm. The potential is tremendous. The fulfillment monumental. Years ago when the farm was a private coffee growing concern rather than a co-op a concrete water holding tank with a ten inch diameter iron pipe leading from it was built to generate grinding power and electricity to help with coffee processing. This iron pipe drops 110 meters (350 feet) down the side of a mountain at about a 60 degree angle. This iron is encased in concrete about 3 or 4 inches thick for the entire length. The bottom thirty meters has double layers of iron pipe and thicker concrete encasement to handle the pressure of so much water in the pipe pushing downward for this distance. It was a beautiful, well made penstock in its day, but now has places that are cracked and where the iron pipe is exposed and rusted through. So the idea is to install the new pvc pipe inside of the old one, that way we don't have to reinforce it with new concrete, etc. What follows is the story of humans and their endeavors to harness nature with their bare hands. Tuesday, eight of us wielded picks, shovels, hoes, chisels, and sledge hammers to remove a ten foot deep section of earth covering where the old pipe exited the concrete holding tank. We exposed the pipe to find a bend (an "elbow") in the pipe where it exited the tank. This meant we would not be able to just slide our new pipe inside the old as we had previously thought, since our pipes are twenty feet long, thick, and very rigid. So we smashed through the concrete encasing the iron pipe with sledge hammers and shovel the debris up and out of the way so it couldn't fall into the pipe and clog it up down below. Wednesday, the crew removed the top half of the iron pipe with cold chisels and hammers so that we had a section of exposed pipe twenty four feet long at the top of the run. I have to admit my optimism about the whole endeavor had faded by now. I was dubious that we would ever be able to complete this project. But everyday our group of five young men from Xela Teco and three from the farm would show up ready to go. They brought the basic tools of shovels, hammers, chisels, and the ever present machete. No lunch bucket or water bottle. They would work all day, talking, laughing, and telling jokes. Occasionally we would take breaks to catch lizards or crabs that hide in the rocks where water leaks out the hillside. (What crabs are doing up here at 4000 feet above sea level in the mountains is beyond me.) I tired quickly with sore back and blistery hands and took a lot more breaks than they did. I constantly looked for patches of shade and have a wide brimmed hat to protect from the intense sun and 90 degree heat. Our idea for installing the new pipe was to drop one twenty foot section into the opening we had created and slide it down into the old pipe, then we could drop a second pipe into this opening and glue it to the first pipe, slide the two downward and drop a third into the opening, glue it, slide them down, etc. I kept looking down the slope at the old pipe and could see little bends and drop offs indicating the old pipe was not a perfectly straight run. What would we do it we got sixty or eight feet of new pipe inside the old one but encountered a twist that wouldn't allow us to push it forward? There would be no way to remove the new pipe at this point and we would have to smash our way through the old concrete and iron to retrieve it. So we decided to tie a rope onto one pipe and lower it through the entire length of the run to see if it would actually make it all the way to the bottom. Thursday morning we set a new pipe in the opening and attached the rope. It began sliding down with ease for about forty feet before breaking free of the rope. It sounded like cannons shooting off as the 60 pound pipe accelerated downward inside the old pipe barrel. Puffs of dust shot out of rusty iron holes. Debris avalanched behind this pvc rocket. . . . You'd have thought Apollo 13 just lifted off the way we stared at each other and then simultaneously let loose with a whoop and a holler. Alfredo even tossed his hat in the air. Then we just stared at each other for a few seconds while the power of what just happened sunk in. It had all started easy enough on the steep slope where we are to install a six inch pvc pipe to channel the water down the mountainside . . . . . I was awed and speechless at the power released when mass and gravity combine to have their way. I felt small already looking down the mountain perched under the shade of a fifteen foot high fern. . . . That was the first fifteen minutes of work on Thursday. We had no idea how far down the pipe had gone. So we spent the next couple hours probing week points of the old pipe to find our pipe had shot down 320 feet to just above the generator house. The next six hours we smashed concrete and chiseled our way through two layers of iron to expose the upper few feet of our pipe. We couldn't wiggle it even a smidge. I was impressed by the tremendous force of gravity, having accelerated the pipe down hill to embed it a full five feet into the fifty years of dirt and debris that had accumulated at the bottom of the old pipe. With ropes and sticks we pried it lose, but our opening was not big enough to extract it from the old pipe. So with more hacking, smashing, prying, cursing and sweating we opened a section large enough to remove our pipe. We left its scratched, rust covered, chipped carcass lie there at the bottom of the hill. As if we had all heard the same whispered command we all sat down in tired silence and wiped our brows. The the youngest sent off to fetch some water. Someone said, "Well, at least we know a pipe can go through the old one from top to bottom." We all caught each other's eyes, then let loose with smiles, laughter, and back slapping. That's what we accomplished this a week. The next report will be on the pelton wheel they are forging for this system in a workshop in Xela and I will describe a photo voltaic system we installed for a family here as well. Brad Burkhartzmeyer btburk@harbornet.com

This is the fourth of Brad's report.

Dear Energy Enthusiasts, Not until our third week on the organic finca (farm) called Nueva Alianza could we feel a sense of accomplishment. Our team from Xela Teco and the community finally busted through the concrete and two layers of steel pipe at the bottom of what used to be a hydro power penstock. Creating this little two foot hole allowed us to clean out 10 meters of rust, dirt, and rocks that had accumulated inside the old pipe over the past fifty years. We are to install new 6" PVC pipes inside the old pipe for a new 16 KW hydro-electrical plant for this community of forty families. The Power of Nature From the last report you will remember we were working extremely hard smashing through old concrete and iron. We were not able to install anything new. Sometimes you just have to call on the power of nature. Drinking coffee after breakfast and discussing the work plan for the day, we started calling Nehemias the bear (el Oso) because he sleeps like one. And Francisco's t-shirt pictured a puma. We named the strong, compact Candido the mighty ant (la hormiga fuerte), Soon I became the wolf (Lobo), Jose became the fox (zorro), and Jeff, the Australian, who came to help was christened the Tecolote (owl). We all took turns acting like the animal we were. I howled. Raucous laughter rolled off the porch as we acted out attracting a mate using this animal nature. (I leave the graphic descriptions to your imagination due to FCC regulations regarding obscenity in international communications) The oso, hormiga fuerte, lobo, zorro, puma, and the tecolote each grabbed a shovel, pick, or sledge hammer and headed off to our hill in the jungle. One crew cut out a 24 foot section out of the center old penstock pipe to allow us access to install the new pipe. The fox, the mighty ant, and the owl went to the bottom to clean out the debris accumulated at the bottom of the old pipe. They dragged a battery down the hill with a 800 watt inverter and a disc sander. Ah, the joys of power tools. They cut a hole in the two layers of steel pipe and began shoveling out dirt and rock. Soon the shovel wasn't long enough to reach the dirt inside the pipe, so we used sticks to jab loose chunks of dirt. Soon the sticks were too short so the mighty ant was sent off to find a better tool. He came back with a 25 foot bamboo tree he chopped down with his machete. Now we could do some serious damage. We jammed that bamboo into the pipe and rotor-rootered our way right through. We could see light from both ends. We could now use the pipe as a walkie-talkie to communicate to the other crew working above. We spent break time telling jokes and sending insults to our fellow workers through our "walkie-talkie." We had now cleared out a 36 meter(110 ft) section of the old pipe, after two weeks of smashing, cutting, cursing, and digging. The 50 degree slope of the old pipe worried us. Could we human beings actually lower 6 glued-together, six-meter sections (each weighing about 60 pounds) down into the old pipe? What if the ropes broke and the pipes shot down on their own and broke or got embedded or stuck part way down? How would we pull it back out to fix the problem? We decided to put one rope inside the new pipes and tie it to a steel plate attached to the end of the first pipe we would insert. Then we would tie two ropes to the upper ends of the pipes and use the trees along the side pulleys and brakes for the ropes. It actually worked! We dragged the six pipes down to our opening and figured out how to put glue them together. Slap the glue on and pound them together with a sledge hammer before the glue set. Then tie them off so they wouldn't slide down the hill on their own before we had all six glued together. Early afternoon was upon us, but the animal spirit possessed: there would be no lunch break until something new was actually installed. It began to snow. (No, the heat hadn't scrambled my brain, but for a few seconds I worried about my grip on reality) Where I grew up on the planes of Minnesota we never had snow when it was ninety degrees out. Oh, it's just ash falling from the local volcano. This realization brouoght relief for a few seconds before panic snuck in. Is there an eruption? Should we run or take cover? What are you supposed to do when a volcano erupts? Duck and cover under your desk like they used to tell us at school?After they laughed at my agitated state of being, my teammates told me the volcano spews ash every hour or so and today the wind is blowing toward us - thus the ash shower. Relax, lobo, relax. Just another day in paradise. Little by little we lowered our pipe into the old pipe. Just like water sliding off a ducks back, until .... 10 feet from the bottom it got stuck. Crap!! We can't push it in nor pull it out. We were no longer afraid it would shoot down the slope on its own. We pounded it from the top, jammed sticks in from the bottom, and shook it with pry bars from the middle. Finally, it busted loose and brought a pile of rusty debris to the bottom with it. Of course, this is unacceptable. It is extremely important when making the penstock that no dirt flows with the water. At the end of the pipe you reduce the pipe down and put a nozzle on it so a jet of water shoots out onto the pelton cups that spin the shaft of the turbine. If debris comes down the pipe and clogs the jets, pressure builds up in the penstock pipe and could cause it to explode or shoot little rocks out at the spinning pelton wheel and break it to pieces. So we spent a good deal of time cleaning out the bottom of the pipe we had just installed. I began to sense an uplifting spirit flow through the group. Lunch was a happy gregarious event that afternoon. The doubts which had pecked away at the back of our minds vanished, we now knew for certain that we could install the pipes. By the end of the day we had installed four more sections of pipe and glued them to the first six. We were more than half way!! That evening, as we watched the sun set beyond the coconut trees into the Pacific ocean some forty miles to the west, we made a pact that our animal names would only be used here on the finca. Back in our shop in Xela we would go by our regular names. We felt one of those rare moments of unity between people and nature wash over us. I teared up. (But please don't tell anyone) The next morning we cleared a five pipe long section of the old pipe to make it ready for our next big run. We glued three pipes together and went in search of our last three pipes. Somebody had carted them off a kilometer up the hill to divert a stream so they could dig sand out for making concrete. We asked for them back and were told they would be brought right down. We waited a couple of hours but the pipes didn't show up. It was Friday afternoon and we decided pack it in for for the weekend. I promised to share with you how the forging of the pelton cups is going. I will try to get to that next time. I hope to describe the decision making process and community politics as well. Those of you who have desires to work in a setting such as this will be fascinated by the dynamics of the society. In response the finca's request our group has be teaching electricity classes to the community as well. You know I love to teach, so I'm heavily involved in that and hope to write about it soon. I'll try to send a brief description of the PV system we installed as well.

6th Report

Dear Energy Enthusiast, Time is flexible. It's four o'clock in the afternoon; class time! Where is everybody? I swear we had an hour-long discussion at last night's community meeting about the class. Everyone said it was a priority and that they would be punctual. . . . Now it's five o'clock. I'm being eaten by insects. Jose and I have been waiting for our students for an hour now. He say's "Ten more minutes and I will do something drastic." My twisted hopes start rising. I want to see mild-mannered Jose do something drastic. (I'm at least ten times more high strung than Jose) Then people started pouring into the classroom. Soon we have to fetch more chairs and make some benches out of stumps and wood. This is our fourth class on electricity. We are to teach the folks how to maintain their hydro-electrical system and how to wire the forty houses they plan to build next year. Technically, the class consists of eight women who form the committee in charge of the hydro electrical project that the U.N. is funding. The community voted to allow anyone wanting to learn about electricity to attend the class. So we often have twenty five or thirty people show up. . . .eventually. . to class. The community asked Jose and I to teach this class. I got all excited about it and we began the first class by talking about how electricity could be generated (gas, oil, coal, wind, solar, water, bio-fuels, etc). Then I launched into Ohm's Law, the foundation of our electrician's craft, Power = voltage times current (P=v*a). After class,we took the U.N.-required attendance signatures. I soon realized that of the eight official women on the committee, one could actually write her name, two could draw their names, and rest needed an ink pad to apply their thumb print in place of a signature. This sent me for a loop. Ohm's law my ass. How are we going to teach these women to maintain a hydro electric generating system that can produce 16 Kilowatts of power if the revolutions per minute on the two custom made pelton turbines operating at 27 liters per second can be maintained at 1800 rpm while installing parallel runs of wires to a control room for three phase, 240volt/120volt power with electronic circuit boards to divert loads for water heating when power is not needed in the community? Right Brad, you are over your head again and the UP.N. is dreaming. Next class I asked them what they wanted to know and we got these questions: What size TV. can we have? Can I get a 24"one? Can we have a stereo? Can I get an iron? Can we buy an electric stove? Though I was writing these questions down in a light less concrete classroom in the tropical jungle slopes of Guatemala, the belief that we humans are more alike than different bubbled up through me. These are the same questions I get asked back in good, ol' Tacoma when I talk about solar power for people's houses. I went back to the drawing board. Doing a little math, 8 Kw feeding forty houses leaves 200 watts per family. Not much power when you think of it. How much power does your stereo require? Mine requires 240 watts. Even a blender (which every Guatemalan cook has) draws 300 watts - a T.V. around a 100 watts. These folks grow coffee and macadamia nuts, and sell them. They purify water, bottle it, put a label on it explaining its nutritional info, and sell in the big towns down on the coast. They're smart, they just can't read. I've got a college degree in mathematics, but can I teach these people anything? Next class we were ready. I brought a bucket of macadamia nuts, a standard light bulb, and an eleven watt compact fluorescent. The bucket of nuts represents the power their system can produce. Each nut you see is equal to this compact fluorescent bulb. We divided the nuts up so each student had twenty nuts (i.e. twenty compact fluorescent or approx 200 watts) The question being how do you want to use your nuts? (no snide comments please) You can have twenty light bulbs like this one or two standard light bulbs. You can have fours nuts of light bulbs and ten nuts for a t.v. and one nut for a small radio or a dvd player, but you need three nuts for a vcr. And there certainly are not 100 nuts nuts available for an iron in your house. Things began to liven up in the room. We drew pictures of appliances and related each to the number of nuts available to the family. Smiley faces were drawn on appliances people would be able to have and sad faces on items that need more electricity than was available. They caught on. No problem. The inevitable came up next: What if my neighbor has two stereos and a t.v. going and uses more power than they are allotted? In the end we decided that a fuse should be installed in each house so that not more than 400 watts could be consumed (remember you need 300 watts for the all important blender and they are allowed because a blender is used for only a few seconds at a time, unlike a t.v.) They discuss a "consumer police" to dish out fines to people that consume more that their allotted 200 watts. Feeling hypocritical and wishing to slink out of the room, I declined joining this committee. Our house in Tacoma probably uses this amount of electricity even when we are thousands of miles away in Guatemala. What if we had a consumer police in our country? Can you imagine the uproar if the city council installs a fuse that blows if you use more that 400 watts of power at your house? And then fine your? The next class was a practicum. We divided into groups to make extension cords from wire, male cord caps and female cord caps. Some of the women didn't know which end to hold on the pliers.This was the first time some had used electrical this type of tool. (I should have just told them to use a machete to make the cords since they can pretty much build an entire civilization with a machete) We taught them how to hold the pliers and what part actually did the cutting. We struggled together with cutters,, wires, and knifes until the ends of the wires were stripped and made into a hook. Then came the screw drivers and how to get the wire to stay in place while you tighten the screw down onto it. Some of you may know that wire often has a mind of its own and does not lie down passively waiting for you to screw it. Eventually every group made a cord and plugged theirs into the next group's cord until a whole chain of cords was inter-connected. The cord chain got plugged into an inverter hooked to a battery and we lit up a light bulb. Cheering, clapping, and laughing burst out when we had light. Outside clouds and darkness had been building up for the past hour, now rain pour down, with the thunder and lightning intensifying our struggle to light up a little 11 watt bulb in the coffee barn/classroom. My best regards to all of you.

   

Here is my 8th Report

Math is important when producing energy. Calculating the amount of power you can produce from a given resource is important for sizing what electrical loads you can supply. Just because we are installing a power system in a remote part of the developing world doesn't mean be can get away with shoddy math. It may be even more important here because forty families will rely on the system we are installing as their only source of electricity. So, for you geeks, this report gives some of the technical calculations involved in the hydro electric project at Nueva Alianza. We have been working out there for seven weeks on this U.N. funded project. Because of this international funding, lots of engineers, bankers and tourists stop by to watch us work. They ask a lot of questions. The biggest question is "How much power is this project going to produce?" We answer, "Eight thousand watts if there is enough water." This just leads to more questions, especially from the engineers. Like, How do you know it will produce 8Kw of electricity? How much water is in the tank? What is the flow rate? How much friction is in the pipe? Why are you putting two generators instead on one? How much pressure will the water have at the bottom of the penstock? Are you sure your pipes can withstand this pressure. Won't the pipes just explode if a frog gets caught inside the pipes and blocks the exit? How are you going to prevent debris from entering? Where are your drawings of the system? Does the U.N. know what you're doing? I tire of the questions after a while. Plans and calculations have been submitted to the U.N. But we're here on the farm getting all the questions. So the Xela Teco boys decide to do a few calculations themselves so we're comfortable talking about it. We spend a couple of evenings arguing over math and pounds vs. kilograms, etc and come up with the following. The engineers' two main concerns were the pressure on the pipe (would the pipe withstand such pressure of a 200 foot drop) and the power the system would be able to produce. The attached .tif drawing will help you visualize the system and make the following formulas easier to understand. First, THE PRESSURE Pressure is equal to the density of water times the acceleration due to gravity times the vertical distance in meters the water is falling (P=d*g*h), so Pressure = (1000 kg/m3)(9.8 m/s2)(59.5m) = 583,100 Pascals (note: m3 means meters cubed, I can't figure out superscript on this machine) Which converts to about 84 pounds per square inch using a conversion program on the computer. The pipe we are using is rated for 225 pound per square inch and the fittings near the turbine nozzles are rated at 350 pounds per square inch. This amount of water pressure is not extravagant. Ask Bob Bonnell to compare this to the water pressure Tacoma Water sends to its clients so you have an idea. Second, THE POWER The potential in watts is equal to the density of water times the acceleration due to gravity times the height of the drop times the flow rate less the losses due to friction and efficiencies of generators and wires. I'm using the flow calculated by Peter Haas and the community as 27 liters per second (they timed how long it took to fill a barrel from an inlet pipe) which is .027 cubic meters per second. We are assuming an efficiency of 52% for the overall system. We had long debates about the accuracy of the flow rate of 27 l/s. The flow rate seems to be the key to the whole formula since the other figures are known factors or much easier to measure. Watts = (1000 kg/m3)(9.8 m/s2)(59.5 m)(.027 m3/s)(.52) = 8,187 watts or 8.2 Kw This calculation is based on the driest time of the year. The community has plans to construct a second water storage tank over the next year. This will double the amount of water available to flow through the pipe we are installing now. This will allow them to have twice the amount of power. Therefore we are installing second generator and the community will be able to generate 16 Kw of power for approximately sixteen hours a day. These generators are three phase, 240/120 volt. According to the boys at Xela Teco, a three phase generator is being used because it is less susceptable to variations in turbine speed than single phase generators.

             

7th Report

That blasted 6" water pipe is finally installed (the penstock). Now we can do what I love: Electrical Work! We spend the day glueing together 105 meters of 2" conduit and pulling eleven wires into it (Four from each of the two generators and three that will serve as emergency shut off control wires from the control house). Eight #6 AWG and three #10 AWG. We assembled the conduit and wire along the nearly flat edge of channel built to bring water from the river. This took us all day because the couplings sent with the conduits were just a hair too small to fit over the conduit. We struggled to get them glued in place. The Oso (the bear) was sent to forging class so the rest of us animals (the Hormiga fuerte, the Puma, the Fox, and the Lobo) dragged this conduit/wire assembly down the slope along side the penstock pipe. The assembly wanted to head downhill all on its own due to the weight of the wire inside the conduit. We had to tie ropes and strapes on the conduit to detain it so we could lower it down slowly. At one point it started sliding and the lead end was pulled upward into a loop high above our heads pointing back up hill. We thought about using it as a catapult weapon to launch rocks at the next farm over but were too tired at this point to get serious about it. We got it lashed into place an hour or so later. The tough part came when we tried to push the upper 12 feet of wire up pole at the top of the run. The wires were too heavy us to pull them back uphill in the conduit to the top of the pole. As I'm learning with these boys, just find a few sticks and get that pulley we yanked off one of the old poles a few weeks ago and three pull and two push and inch by inch we got enough wire pulled up the pole to make our splice to the overhead wires heading to the "Casa de Control." Now we just have to string eleven wires 150 feet thru the trees along a couple of poles we had already installed. A few more ropes and climb up into the trees and pull the wire. First you have to dig a flat spot to prop up the scrap wood ladder you dragged into the jungle in order to reach the top of the poles. No problem. It took a day and a half, but we got the wire into the air and attached to the posts. We puff our chests out and call it a day at 11 a.m. on Friday. Well, we have to have a good lunch since Marcelo (that's my name here) is leaving to head back to the U.S. in a couple of days. Seven weeks and we got the penstock pipe down the hill and the wires up the hill. The generators and pelton wheels still need to be assembled and placed. Then there is the breakers, control circuits, emergency shutoffs, and the wires to distribute the power to the community left to be completed. I won't be here to help with that. I want the closure of completing the project and feel like I'm disembarking from a river boat before we've reach the mouth at the sea. I'm tired an grateful and sad. I don't want to leave the team. We are brothers in changing little parts of the world.

Fellow Solarist, This is my first report from Guatemala.

I hope to send you brief updates once a week or so on the progress toward renewable energy being made by several small groups here in Guatemala. You are on the list for people to receive updates from me because at some point you put your name on a list. If you are not interested in continuing to receive these reports, just drop me an email and I will remove your name. If you know of someone else that is interested let me know and I will add their name to the list. Thanks. I am doing volunteer work for a group called Xela Tecnologia in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Quetzaltenango is called Xela (pronounce shay-la) by all the locals and since it is easier to write that is how I'll refer to it as well. You may look up Xela Teconologia on their website: www.xelateco.com. They have a plan to work on bio-gesters, windmills, solar hot water panels, and micro-hydro systems. They have a three year plan and hope to be financially independent by that time. They hope to be operating a for-profit business by then. They have received seed money and tech support from a group in the US called AIDG. You can check out their website. I started working there today. I helped make a hot water storage tank from galvanized sheet metal. We cut out a rectangle and formed it into a cylinder, crimped the edges together and them soldered it shut. Then we cut out sheet metal circles and formed and crimped and soldered them to form the top and bottom. Tomorrow we will cut holes and solder galvanized pipes in place to act as water inlets and outlets. We will then wrap this tank in insulation and make another bigger tank to drop this first tank into. Thus creating a double walled insulated storage tank. We are supposed to make eight of these. It is very slow going. Everything is done by hand with materials that can easily be purchased here in town. I'll be developing a lot of new skills in the process. Here is a factoid for comparison: Annual energy consumption in Guatemala is 341 kilowatt-hours. Annual energy consumption in the US is 11,994 kilowatt-hours.

Dear Renewable Energy Folks, This is my 2nd report.

A lot has happened since the first report. I was helping to make insulated water tanks out out galvanized sheet metal last time I wrote. We have completely finished two of the eight tanks we are building. We have made all eight of the inside tanks and have six more outer tanks to complete. We paint them red when they are complete. In the attached photo you can see one of these beautiful tanks installed as part of a solar hot water system on the roof of a hotel in a small mountainous community called Nueva Alianza (New Alliance) Susannah and I went with five of the folks from Xela Teco (the group where I'm volunteering) to the Nueva Alianza farm for three days this week. We left the high dry air of Xela and headed two hours around the volcanoes toward the Pacific Coast to the farm at the end of the pot holes. Forty families live scattered around the tropical forest mountains surrounding the main farm buildings. They grow coffee and macadamia nuts for commercial sale, purify water from the river with Ultra Violet light and sell it to towns around under the label of "Agua Pura de Alianza", raise pigs and cows for their own consumption, grow a lot of their own food in little gardens, and have a "hotel" for tourists (basically bunk beds, shared baths, beautiful views, and hikes, and large portions of rice and beans at every meal). What were a bunch of alternative energy folks doing out here besides enjoying the tropical scenery, you may ask? This place is the hot bed of cutting edge renewables in Guatemala. The Xela Teco people had already installed two bio digesters to produce methane gas for cooking from the pig and cow excrement. The pig bio digester seems to be working fine. Eight to ten pigs are making about four hours worth of cooking gas per day. The cow crap doesn't seem work as well. Two of the folks from our group spend the day determining that the cow bio digester was set up correctly in the physical sense (i.e., the shit was in the bags, water covered it completely, no leakage from the bags) yet no gas was being produced. They concluded it was something biological with the process of the decomposing cow manure. So they hauled over a few buckets of pig manure and added that to the equation. I won't be able to tell you the results until we go back to the farm next week. I have included a photo of the solar hot water heating system that Xela Teco has installed at the hotel at Nueva Alianza. (Notice the pretty red tank!) This system works very well. As a matter of fact the group had to install a cold water mixing valve in the shower because the water was too hot. The draw back of this system is that the incoming water pressure is so low or at times no water at all is coming to this tank so that you can't take a shower. One of our projects for the next week is to work with the community to figure out how to get a better flow of water to this tank. No one seems to know where the feed pipe is coming from though we tried to follow it through a maze of little out buildings until it disappeared underground. (The farm was built in the early part of last century and has at least fourteen different buildings scattered around.) Xela Teco has been contracted by Nueva Alianza to install a 16 kilowatt hydroelectrical power generating plant. (Partiallly funded by the United Nations) That's the main reason we went there this week. To look at the layout of the land and decide how to run the wires and distribute power to all the little buildings. The farm has a 30,000 liter water reservoir already and will be doubling it to accomplish the generation of 16 KW. We are going to install two 6" pipes that will drop down about 60 meters to two 8 KW three phase generators to which will be attached pelton wheels that will actually spin the generator shafts. Myself and Jose Ordonez have been put in charge of bringing the power lines back up the hill from the generators to the Casa de Control, where we will locate the breakers and the controls for the system. We will try to have the electrical material to the farm by next week and have it installed by March 5th? Who knows, just got to go with the flow. (that's a pun for you hydro people) Attached are photos of the solar hot water system, the reservoir, and the view down towards the generator shack where we will be installing both the water pipes and the electrical conduit. Today's factoid for comparison: Life expectancy in Guatemala is 65 years, in the U.S. it is 77 years. Next time I'll try to report on Xela Teco's progress with their little foundry as they try to actually caste the pelton wheel in bronze in their shop in Xela.

This is the fifth of Brad's report from Guatemala where he and Susannah are working as volunteers with a local group, called Xela Teco, that installs renewable energy systems here.

This is my personal experience of working on alternative energy projects in a developing country with a group that is trying to use local technology to meet some of the energy needs here in the community.) Dear Energy Enthusiast, I promised to describe the process of fabricating a Pelton Wheel that will act as the turbine that spins the generator shaft for our project here at the Nueva Alianza farm where we are installing a 16 KW micro hydro electrical system for forty families. In the Xela Teco workshop they are fabricatic the cups that will catch the water as it shoots out the jets at the bottom of the penstock. I believe the cups are 120mm in length. Fourteen are needed for each of the two turbines and they have to be separated by by a 23 degree angle. This Pelton Wheel will spin at a constant rate of 1800 revolutions per minute to produce 8 KW of constant power. (That is the theory anyway, we'll see what actually happens in a few months) A fast-spinning wheel spinning needs precise balancing to prevent wobbling and vibration. Theh cup's construction needs great accuracy. It's hard to believe they are even attempting to forge their own cups out of brass, but nothing seems to deter them. They do not want to depend on a replacement part coming from some other country if something breaks. They want to keep the system running. They started by molding a cup out of bond-o, the stuff used for autobody repair. They are using this bond-o cup to press into some black sand to make a mould. they do this twice so you have a top and bottom mould. Then you put these two molded halves together and pour

in molten aluminum, wait a little while, then break the mold open and remove your new aluminum cup. Sounds good in theory. The first few cups came out looking like saucers left over from some Viking raid in the tenth century. They were full of holes, had lots of pitted areas, and were not smoooth at all. Pracitce makes perfect. They kept making new molds with sand and casting more cups. Then they switched to molds of clay and made more cups. Then mixed clay with plaster to make molds and made more cups. Then we mixed sugar with clay and sugar with sand and plaster with sand and........ You get they idea. After about a month the "cup team" has about three usable aluminum cups. But they have alot of experience and are getting better and better as time goes on. A few dayls ago the "cup team" travelled to Hueheutenango to spend a day with an expert forger and get instruction and tips on how to improve their technique. They need to make 28 usable aluminum cups to run some tests with the generator. Then they will use the aluminum cups to make molds for the brass cups that will be the finished product. They came back with one beautiful brass cup and great hopes to make the rest. They are hard at making molds as we speak. Did I mention that first they had to build a forge? See the attached picture. They built a smaller one at first but could not get it hot enough to melt the aluminum (They are using a scrap aluminum car engine as the raw material) so they had to make the one shown in the photo. You dump charcoal in the bottom, throw in a little gasoline, toss in a match, then blow air into th pipe with a hair dryer to get the fire nice and hot. A few minutes later you have molten aluminum. A few times someone will say, "Let's just buy the damn Pelton Wheel and import it." But ten minutes later they are making another mold, Perseveraence. I've watched this process for six weeks now. I probably would have given up by now. I sincerely hope they can perfect the process because it represents one more step towards independence. Next I suppose they will try to make a three phase generator from scratch. The next report will describe the electricity classes we have been teaching. I'm enjoying that tremendously. My best regards to all of you.

This is my 9th report.

Dear Enthusiast,

A few weeks ago I whined about having to learn patience while waiting for the students to show up for our electrical class. Time crawled then, as the breeze died and the sun faded (and you begin to imagine even more mosquito bites in the still heat of dusk.) Then the day comes when you have to say good bye to these folks. Suddenly time seems to have flown. Where did that crawling time disappear to? I look back and see the wake trailing off behind, realizing time's been running like the wind, the sails stretched full. Time to say good bye. I hug each of the men and women I worked with over the last 8 weeks. We shake hands, promise to keep in touch. Tears and smiles mix like earth and the rain. Jose bows slightly as part of the good bye. Francisco, Nehemias, and young Candido -- I will miss you all. I make promises to return, though I don't know how or when and haven't even talked to Susannah about coming back. Within, I mull over how to stay connected when thousands of miles will stretch between us. Together our team installed 300 feet of 6" pipe down a mountain slope, and conduit and wires up that same slope. We strung wires, on the poles we made, all the way to the "control house." We completed about half of the project to date. The generators, pelton wheels, and the breakers and controls still need to be installed. The water tank still needs some work and a filter system built to keep debris out of the penstock needs to be fabricated. The distribution system to the community's buildings needs to be upgraded yet. All these will need to be tested and fine tuned before the project is completed. The target date is now August 15th. But our time was up in Guatemala. We returned to Tacoma on April 12th. I feel like I left in the fifth inning, when the game is far from over. My heart wants to keep playing. How can I in good conscience leave in the middle of the project? Am I just a "do gooder" that leaves for the comfort of my lazy boy recliner? (From whose comfort I'm writing this, by the way!) Don't they need me? My brain? my electrical knowledge? my organizing abilities? my educational insights? I want them to need me, but the truth is they will complete the project and forty families will have power in their homes regardless of what I do. All because they can do it. And want to do it. (After all, their ancestors invented the concept of zero and built a civilization whose pyramids still rise out of the jungle. And all without the wheel. ) I feel honored to have been a part of the process. It is also a luxury to be able to leave, to fly home, eat meat, and put toilet paper into the toilet. So after eight weeks sweating on the side of this jungle mountain, I'm marginally more knowledgeable in renewable energy systems and profoundly more connected to people solving energy problems. The magic solution seems to lie less with technology and more within the steps we tread along the path toward fulfilling people's needs in a way that matches our surroundings. What will I carry away from this experience? First, we can whine and moan all day long. In the end, we must actually join hands to make solutions from what we have in front of us. Second, tinkerers must tinker. Third, something is always possible using what you have at hand. Forth, take one step today, and remember, there's always tomorrow. Perhaps some optimism has snuck into me. I do believe we can find solutions to the problems of development and energy in the world. One project at a time. I've derived great pleasure sharing my experience with you over the past few weeks. I will be looking for more ways to do this type of work in the future.

Thank you for your support, comments, and inspiration! I hope to see you soon. Please send your comments and questions as I would love to hear from you. My best regards to all of you.

Hasta Luego, Brad Burkhartzmeyer (a.k.a. Marcelo) btburk@harbornet.com

P.S. The immigration protests in the US last Monday made the front pages of all the Guatemalan papers. Big Issue!

     

   

1st report from Nicaragua

Dear Energy Enthusiast,

Susannah and I are at it again. This time working in Nicaragua as volunteers with Grupo Fenix, a alternative energy organization at the Engineering University in Managua. (see www.grupofenix.org) Our host here is Susan Kinne who has been working in Nicaragua since 1989 and is the director of Grupo Fenix. We will be here for three weeks only and I will attempt to send out couple of blurbs during our time here, though we don't have access to much electricity or to the internet where we are staying. We really got into it this time. The bus dropped us off on the side of the highway. Just a couple of young Nicaraguans standing on the side of the road. No houses or town in site. The highway rose up a few thousand feet after travelling north from Managua for three hours passing through the towns of Jinotega and Estili and Ocotal in northwestern Nicaragua near the Honduran border. The kids that met us were 17-year-old Xiamora and her 15-year old brother Osmar. Osmar loaded our suit cases onto his bicycle and took off down a dirt path into the trees. Xiomara says, "Welcome to Sabana Grande (Big Sheet) We just have to walk a couple kilometros to our house. You will be staying with my family." I noticed the power lines followed the highway, but did not head down the muddy path we were walking on. The first house we passed had a solar oven in the front yard roasting coffee. The cooker looked both well used and well made. Painted blue with a sheet metal "roof" to ward off the tropical rain and sun. Further up the "road" we passed a house with a small (30 watt) photo voltaic panel on the roof and a couple of 12-volt d.cd. compact flourescents hanging from wires on the porch. I started thinking about the beaten path and the path less travelled . . . wondering why these people can put up a solar system on their house and I complain about the color of the light coming from the compact flourescents I put in my lamps at home in Tacoma. "My dad makes them, those solar panels," is Xiamora's respond when I asked about the solar panel we saw on the clay tiled roof. Yes, it is true, I saw the "factory" later that afternoon. They put together solar panels from broken cells shipped in from the states and Europe, doing the soldering, lamination, and framing themselves. More on this later, we are going to make a panel next week for a little irrigation pumping system. It hot here (95 or so in the shade), we felt like spent dishrags by the time we arrived at our hosts house. Immediately we were served a pineapple/rice refreshment in the shade of a papaya tree. AAAAHHHHHH !! Life's pretty good sometimes. The adobe house has a clay roof supporting a solar panel (45 watts) and is surrounded by trees and a fifteen foot high hibiscus in full bloom. Our room has a bed and a mosquito net and a tin roof. the baby blue solar oven sits on a wheeled cart in a sunny clearing in the yard. Chickens, roosters, a dog, and a little kitten sleep and scratch below the trees. there is a turkey with a blue nose that keeps puffing its chest out at Brad like he wants to fight. Brad puffs his chest right back at him, but the turkey's not impressed. What to look forward to: Presidential elections here are on Sunday of which we will send a report --- people here take their democracy seriously. 2) Making solar panels 3)installing a solar home system for a family here (no grid power to this community of 200 families) 4) making a solar cookers for two families and the process of deciding who in the community gets the cookers. 5) Hosting a Solar Energy International class here in this community during the week of November 14. 6) Ongoing reports of cultural phenomena regarding life of the grid, off the sewer, and off the water pipe for a couple of gringo's Can't guarantee when the next report will be out, but we will do our best.

Send e-mail's with specific questions and requests and we will try to answer.

Take care,

Brad

2nd report from Nicaragua

   

   

Well, we got to a computer again so soon. Looks like Washington state is flooding according to the news on yahoo. Hope you are all safe and dry. The following is a few thoughts on the election process we witnessed here in Nicaragua. Thanks for your replies from the last posting and I look forward to more. Brad. Dear Energy Enthusiast, Talk about a big deal --- the schools closed Wednesday, the buses stopped running Saturday noon, church services were moved to Saturday, and the entire community turned in by 8:30 pm to be ready for the big day on Sunday. Clothes are washed and even ironed with a real iron pulled out of the coals in the kitchen. National elections are on Sunday here in Nicaragua. And believe me, elections are a huge event here. People really care about politics, and take it very seriously. Mauro, our host family father, left the house at 3 am to walk an hour to the polling station at the school where he was to work as a volunteer election official. The rest of the voting age people in our family left at 5 am to get in line to vote. The polling station opened at 8 am. If you are 16 years old you can vote. Every adult, without exception, that we have talked to knows the issues and the candidates. I’ve yet to meet an adult here who isn’t going to vote. We went with Donald and Luis Miguel to bring Mauro (their dad) his lunch at about 10 a.m. in the morning. We walked 45 minutes further into the hills to a two room school house made of concrete blocks with a tin roof. The nearest town was a 90 minute walk and a 20 minute bus ride away, yet we found hundreds of people waiting in line to vote. Mauro and the other officials helped people get in the proper line according to alphabetical name list posted on the walls of the school. One person was allowed into the school at a time to vote. A person’s national i.d. card was the only form accepted for identification. Presidential voting is accomplished by placing an X in the blank circle below the candidates’ picture, name, and party flag. Having the pictures and symbols on the ballot allows for people who don’t read to be able to select their candidate. People who got in line by 4 am were done voting by 10 am, those that arrived at 8 am waited for six or seven hours to vote. An ordered excitement prevailed as people incessantly chatted in hushed tones. No kids horsing around. The typical soccer ball and young people’s cat calls were conspicuous in their absence. The polls stayed open until there were no more people in line. Some closed as late as 11 pm Young adults with white T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Official Observer” wandered around the lines and the school. They prevented people from cutting in line and allowed disabled or elderly to move to the front of the line. They also made sure no political provocateurs tried to disrupt the process or broke into the school to steal the voting urns. Mauro returned home at midnight and started calling the Elections Council on a cell phone and reported the results of the election from the school. He came home because he couldn’t get a cell signal at the school. After calling he returned to the voting station and helped take the ballots to the municipal headquarters. He didn’t sleep. The kids were listening to the radio all night to see how the vote was going. Every time their party would win in a little town they would jump and clap. Very little sleep was happening in our house that night. It appears that the Sandinista party won the elections with Daniel Ortega as president. They have not been in power for 16 years and the people in the community where we are living are totally excited about the prospect. They have great faith that the Sandinistas with help their kids with school costs and lower prices of basic goods. I wish them all the luck in the world. The economic situation here is very difficult.

Hasta Luego,

Brad Burkhartzmeyer

btburk@harbornet.com

3rd report from Nicaragua

   

   

This is the third report from Brad Burkhartzmeyer and Susannah Nuriel who are volunteering in Nicaragua with an alternative energy group called Grupo Fenix. We are in a village in northern Nicaragua where the grid barely reaches working with a small workshop that makes solar panels from rejected solar cells and builds solar ovens. Dear Energy Enthusiast, These are no everyday solar ovens. They are made to last and constructed to rigid specifications by people who have memorized all the dimensions. Two layers of 4 millimeter thick glass that allow sunlight into the cooker are separated by exactly two centimeters. Students from Nicaragua's Engineering University studied models of solar ovens and proved that that two centimeter separation allows heat in but does not allow convection currents of air to develop between the layers of glass, therefore assuring that the heat stays inside the oven. Tin foil is used to reflect more sunlight into the oven and a small mirror is placed near the top of the oven lid to reflect a little dot of light into the center of the black bottom of the oven. As you raise or lower the lid this light dot moves across the bottom of the oven, when it is dead center one knows the lid's tilt angle maximally oriented towards the sun. The deluxe model even comes with a base constructed of 2x4s with wheels and has wheelbarrow handles sticking out so you can easily rotate it to face the sun as it moves across the sky during the day. The ovens use about $100.00 worth of material to construct. Pine boards make up the majority of the frame with mahogany serving to add strength for attaching the lid's hinges. We spent 30 to 40 hours building one. They sell a few of them to people from the capital Managua for $150.00, but most stay in the community. This community of 200 household has placed 27 solar ovens into service since 1999. They travel to other towns teaching people how to construct their own solar cookers. They even won a prize for the most innovative and efficient design at a national energy fair a last month. (Makes me think fondly of the work our little groups do at the Northwest Solar Group and Solar Washington) What impact can a solar oven have on a community like this? We asked Lupita to share with us her insights since she'd been with the group from the beginning. We expected her to wax eloquent about how many pounds of carbon dioxide they have prevented from entering the atmosphere and how respiratory ailments have dropped due to less smoky cooking conditions. She glossed over the environmental reasons, jumping straight to world peace. People who do not own their own land scour for firewood on other people's land. This causes fights and resentment and physical threats. So the solar ovens reduce poaching, thus greatly reducing tension in the community. Let's recall the troops from Iraq and send them solar ovens! Cake's Ready. Water is a big deal here. (We bathe from a bucket carried a half kilometer from the nearest well.) With a solar oven you can make hardboiled eggs without any water. You can cook beans with half of the water you need when cooking over a fire. Solar ovens save trips to the well! Now that is something people here get excited about. Around the neighborhood I see that about half of the solar ovens are used on a daily basis. Others are seldom used. (People really don't have an oven here, so baking is seldom done in the average kitchen.) By Brad Burkhartzmeyer Please find the attached word doc as my third report on Renewable Energy in Nicaragua. We installed a solar home system today and a solar pump for irrigation that I'll try to write about and send some pictures in a couple of days. This group we are working with has a great mixture of practice and research. Students come to test the oven models and the group revises the construction accordingly.

Hope you are doing well, and look forward to hearing from you.

Brad Burkhartzmeyer

4th report from Nicaragua

   

   

 

This is the fourth report from Brad Burkhartzmeyer and Susannah Nuriel who are volunteering in Nicaragua with an alternative energy group called Grupo Fenix.

We are in a village in northern Nicaragua, where the grid barely reaches, working with a small workshop that makes their own solar panels from rejected solar cells and builds solar ovens for cooking in the community. Dear Energy Enthusiast, Today we made a solar panel. No I’m not pulling your leg. We are 2 kilometers from the nearest paved road and haul our water to the house in the morning from a well. Yet, these folks manufacture photovoltaic panels. They receive used or factory rejects from cell manufacturers (brought into the country by visitors.) cut them into equal sizes and then solder leads onto the positive and negative sides of the cell linking them in series from + to – until the desired voltage is reached. (Technical aside: all solar cells have a voltage of 0.5 volts regardless of their area. The area determines the amperage of the cell. Cutting the cells into smaller cells you still have a cell with 0,5 volts, but have reduce the amperage. I believe the amperage can be calculated at about 20 milliamps per square centimeter. If someone knows for sure the amperage formula, please let me know and I’ll pass it on.. Thanks) Today’s goal: make a solar charger for AA batteries. With no grid connection to most homes in Sabana Grande, folks use a lot of batteries for radios and flashlights (it gets dark around 5:30 pm so flashlights facilitate visiting and courting during the evening hours). With solar battery chargers even non-rechargeable batteries’ lives can be extended beyond their normal lifespan. Results: Less batteries littering the roadside. We searched through the workshops cracked and broken solar cells to find some we could cut into 3 cm by 7 cm rectangles. Then we soldered four of these in series to make a 2-volt, 0.5 amp solar panel. We poured transparent liquid silicone (imported and very expensive - $280.00 per gallon) onto a piece of glass precut to have a 1 inch margin beyond our cells. We wait 30 minutes for the air bubbles to dissipate, leaving a smooth translucent surface still in a semi liquid state. Next we gently press our linked cells into this silicone with the negative side facing the silicon (that’s the blue side you see on most pv modules) making sure no air remains trapped between the cells and the silicone. Then we waited eight hours for this to dry. Be gentle as the cells are thin and as brittle as glass. Meanwhile we built a little battery holder out of scrap pieces of angled aluminum cut with a hacksaw and drilled to hold a AA battery. Attach wire leads between the holder and the cell’s terminals. Viola!! You now have yourself a solar battery charger. Put a nice aluminum frame around it all and glue a piece of plastic on the back moisture/dust protection and you are in business. Susannah was in heaven making here charger. She’s wrapped in five layers of clothes and buried in her suitcase for the trip home. See attached photo. This would be a great project for a shop or science class if anyone is interested. I’m sure we could find the necessary parts. Just let me know. By Brad Burkhartzmeyer

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