UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Posted on August 15, 2012 After collecting the data from the Rushaki and District-recommended sites, we went back to Byumba and spent the last part of Monday and the better part of Tuesday giving lessons on alternators and electric machines, safety issues and ballast loads, turbine design and penstock sizing, and how to perform a comprehensive economic comparison of different small energy-system options. Briefly discussed AC/DC generation and transmission, using induction motors as generators (for a great manual on this, look up Nigel Smith!), but unfortunately didn’t get a chance to cover pumps-as-turbines. Tools included HOMER for economic modelling (with some sample models and an exercise for them), various design manuals (village power, various Practical Action/ITDG publications) and a bit of turbomachinery theory. Between these, seeing Christophe’s site, and performing site surveys, I think they’ve got a good starting point for thinking through the various elements of pote...

When you are a teacher it's probably a good idea not to have obvious favorites, but I think it's okay to have favorite names... Here are some of my lovely kiddos with what I consider to be some of the best names ever!   This is Frank, but because native Nyanja speakers tend to pronounce R as L, it comes off as Flank. Or Flankie. Sometimes I go up to him and say, "Flank!" because that is technically his name here, and in return I get a smile like this.       This is Aaron, you've met him before, he's the coolcat baby with dreads. But his name is also adorable, they enunciate very well here so Aaron is pronounced like Ahhh.Ron. AhpauseRon.    Speeway, Speeway, Speeway. Your name is so cool and you are so cool, and I am 9 years older than you and definitely not as cool. Speeway. (I just found out that it is actually spelled like Sipiwa, but my spelling of her name is how we say it!)  Blessings. I have never met someone so aptly na...

At a near half-way point for Bryan and myself here in Zambia, we are beginning to really take a look into the long-term plan of SMART Light, all the while reflecting on our time here so far. This week we have really moved full steam ahead in meeting with local NGO’s during the day, getting to better know our team at Disacare, and actually going out into local communities and meeting with residents. The visits to the communities, or "compounds" as they call it, have been very interesting in that we are actually seeing what a night in the compound can be like. This is a great opportunity to show the SMART Llight, and gather market research. Photo courtesy Edward Silva. Prospective Lusaka customers trying out the SMART Light. In addition, from a business perspective, seeing the consumer in their own environment really gives us a lot of information about how to position the SMART Light effectively. We have also been able to meet with some local organizations, and some la...

Posted on August 15, 2012 Following the trip to Shyira (Wednesday), we lodged in Musanze and spent Thursday morning planning community surveys and going over some system-related information to learn while in the community (preferred electric load schedules, for instance). While performing community/site surveys, we stayed in Byumba, Gicumbi. Although it is possible to cut eastward to Byumba from Musanze, it was quickest to go Musanze-Kigali-Byumba via buses, so Thursday afternoon and evening  were spent traveling. On Friday morning, we made our way out to the first site of interest, the Nyakeru river in Rushaki.  From Byumba, we went to Maya via bus, then took motos from Maya to Rushaki center.  To our surprise, there was electrification here!  Turns out, a European Commission/USAID/MININFRA project a few years back installed a 45kW system nearby on a larger river.  However, it is not enough to supply all of the villages nearby, and villagers reporte...

Posted on August 15, 2012 Note well – When you meet with officials interested in hydropower development in their district, you might go directly from a formal meeting to the field!  On Monday morning (Aug 13) we met with some Gicumbi District representatives at the office in Byumba, including the Executive Secretary and an EWSA official.  After discussing the idea of training locals to develop their own small systems, and talking a bit over how the UC-Davis/NUR-Butare/Gicumbi relationship might look in the future, they decided that we should see some potential sites immediately — so we all piled into a Land Rover and made our way to two sites. We performed basic head/flow surveys of both sites (Rusumo/Gisiza and Kajero), and met some of the sector officials interested in potentially connecting to power from these sites.  Both had significant head  for being smaller sites, and are near enough to clusters of homes or town centers for our purposes! Rusumo/Gisi...

As noted in my previous post, this has been a hard week but this morning I woke up to find out that three more of our orphans have gotten sponsored. This is such good news, and brings a little bit more balance to the week on a whole. Life here is very challenging, but there are still so many things to smile about:  This is Aaron, he is two and already has dreads, such a cool cat. Aaron is very shy at first, but he and I have become good pals, it is now a daily ritual for me to pick him up and tickle him silly, as seen here :)  This is Nathan and Blessings, they are cousins and love to play keep away soccer with me. They are both incredibly sweet and funny.  Photo bomb! The kids all love to be photographed. Angela and Angel. Angel is Mary's one year old grandchild who comes to school and stays on our backs while we teach. She is possibly the cutest baby in the world.

Posted on August 15, 2012 On Wednesday the 8th, we started early to meet with the Director of the Energy Development Division of EWSA in Kigali.  He also responded positively to the idea of using small locally-built systems and encouraged us to continue our work. From his previous time in Rwanda, Kyle knew of a young man who developed his own picohydroelectric system for his village, using homemade/salvaged parts and some serious dedication.  His umudugudu (Shyira) is very remote, but given the nature of this trip it was definitely worthwhile seeing. Furthermore, we could use this site as a training site to teach site-surveying to the interns, and to get a practice run in before heading to the prospective communities. So directly from the EWSA office, we went down to Nyabagogo (the main-but-not-centrally-located bus depot in Kigali) and took a bus to Musanze.  After dropping some bags at a friends residence in Musanze, it was a bone-jarring and beautiful 1.5 hou...

As week two begins the hardships that we see and experience seem to occur more and more. I feel like I have aged ten years in these past two days with the intense things that have happened. Poverty is something that is so easy to disengage from. When you live in a place like America, it’s very easy to see pictures of starving children in Africa and feel bad, but then very quickly forget about them. It is a simple thing to lose touch with those who are suffering from any types of poverty when you avoid it, or try and stay away from it. I am not saying this is a bad thing, but it is a very dangerous thing because once you become disconnected from people, compassion and the drive to help them can dwindle. Anyways, what I have come to see here is that poverty, in whatever form it may be in, becomes so much more personal, and so much more heartbreaking when you start forming connections with the people who are suffering. In Zambia the unemployment rate is about 70% and I would guess i...

Posted on August 14, 2012   Here's a brief photo of us with the Cell leader of the Nyakeru site in Rushaki! Very promising site, both socially (very interested people) and technically (just under 3kW potential in the dry season).     Posted on August 15, 2012   Had a great turnout at the Energy-Luncheon Meeting on Tuesday, August 7th!  The goal of the luncheon was to bring together people from various backgrounds (SMS, energy, water) in Rwanda and exchange ideas and lessons learned in their particular area of expertise. Planning ahead can be somewhat difficult in Rwanda and sometimes plans change last minute, so we were a bit skeptical about how many of the 20 confirmed attendees would make it. We were overjoyed by the response: 18 people came from 8 different organizations! The groups that presented were: EWSA:  The company that works on the national energy grid in Rwanda.  Talked about how they welcome any/all help in meeting...

On Friday we made about a 7 hour drive through the African bush, passing only remote villages along the way to go spend the weekend in Livingstone. This weekend probably contained more adventure than I have experienced in my entire life, okay, maybe that's a lie, but here is a little taste of what happened: We camped in a campsite that had monkeys roaming all over it. I got chased by a monkey. I got chased by a zebra. A baboon jumped into our car. We ate caterpillars and crocodile. We went swimming on top of Victoria Falls, one of the world's seven natural wonders. We watched the most beautiful sunset in the world over the Zambezi river at the Royal Livingstone. We walked into Zimbabwe and watched bungee jumpers fly down the falls. We drove to Botswana and had a river safari that went in between Namibia and Botswana, and during this safari we saw elephants, hippos, crocodiles, water buffaloes, tons of birds, and those African animals that look like deers... they have a real na...

First week at the school is just about finished, and what a week it has been. In the words of Ken, working with these kids is like working with kindergarteners who don’t really speak English and who range in age from 4-16, in other words, exhausting. Angela and I both came down with some sort of illness that we are attributing just to the overall fatigue of the high energy level that is required. That being said, this week has also been phenomenal.   The kids at Appleseed are so incredible; most of them have stories that are unspeakably sad. Some are orphans, some have faced abuse, all live in the throes of poverty, and yet they all come to school with these big smiles, just so happy to be there.  Appleseed only started last year and most of the children who go there have never had any education, so even the oldest kids are still learning how to read and do simple math equations.    This week we have done a lot of assessments to see where the kids are a...

We have been working with the community of Quincucirca to develop a potable water supply system for the town, with distribution to each household. This will be Engineers Without Borders-UC Davis' second assessment trip to the community and the immediate surrounding area. While significant data were gathered on the first assessment trip in 2010, the political landscape has changed in Quincucirca requiring the community to renegotiate their water rights. Subsequently, new information is needed to design the potable water supply system.  In assessing what we had to offer, we outlined four possible courses of action. With the potable water pipeline being the most expensive part of the project, designing a system that will work is crucial and particularly important to engage the community so it has a clear sense of it's own needs and priorities. Through communications before this trip, the community decided to move forward and construct a potabl...

August 24 th , 2012 We have officially made our first SMART Light transaction! With only 48 hours in Zambia, I have come to expect a few things: Internet data packages go fast, punctuality is a luxury, and to continually expect the unexpected. This last point (well actually the last two) was evident in my delayed flight, and very much alive in my first meeting with our local partner organization here in Zambia: Disacare. Photo courtesy Edward Silva & Bryan Pon While in a Saturday meeting with management from Disacare, where Bryan and myself explained the opportunities and potential of the SMART Light, as well as trained our first potential entrepreneurs, we had 3 visitors show up. Although one was set up through Bryan’s network at UC Davis, the other visitors were a random couple from Japan and Sweden, who saw the SMART Light online, found our location, and happen to find us all there on a Saturday. After getting some hands on experience in explaining the value of the pr...

For the next two weeks, I will be based in La Paz, Bolivia working with the NGO Engineers in Action (EIA) to prepare for our working trip to Quincucirca .   Engineers in Action works as a "middle-man", building engineering partnerships between engineering organizations around the world wishing to help local communities help themselves.  For large national groups such as Engineers Without Borders  which I am affiliated with vis-a-vie our UC Davis campus EWB chapter , having an in-country partner is invaluable.   Currently, EIA is partnering with 10 EWB-USA chapters (including EWB at UC Davis), dozens of US, Canadian and Bolivian Rotary Clubs, and many others. What kind of communities does EIA have partnerships with? EIA makes sure that projects are have been appropriately vetted so as to reflect the priorities of the local communities, not what might be priorities for those organizations and entities building the projects. ...