Great Energy Challenge Grantees

Solar Electric Light Fund

Photograph courtesy Robert A. Freling, Solar Electric Light Fund

Project location: Kalalé, Benin, Africa (map)

Project goal: Install a solar photovoltaic system to power a school, health clinic, 900 households, microenterprise center, Internet kiosk, and community center

In partnership with the local Association pour le Developpement Economique Social et Culturel de Kalalé (ADESCA), Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) designed its Whole Village electrification program. Because an agricultural component was determined to be the critical initial step, the project's pilot phase involved installing solar drip-irrigation systems, the Solar Market Garden (SMG), for each of three women's cooperatives in two pilot villages, Bessassi and Dunkassa. The SMG merges solar-powered water pumping with a drip-irrigation model pioneered at the Niger office of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and is designed to yield produce for sale as well as consumption.

This success also provided the basis for extending electricity throughout the pilot villages, which is the objective of this project. This work involves installing systems to power each village's water supply, school, health center, micro-enterprise and Internet centers, street and market lighting, and household solar LED lighting.

Three wells for drinking water have been successfully drilled (only one may require minor purification treatment). Finishing the water delivery system (piping, tower locations, and spigot locations) is the next priority, followed this winter by solar electrifying the villages' clinics and schools. The micro-enterprise centers and the balance of the work is planned for 2012.

The long-term goal is to provide a development model for much of West Africa, where conditions are similar to those in northern Benin. Additionally, the model can be adapted for use throughout the developing world.

Project participants:

• Solar Electric Light Fund is an international non-profit founded in 1990 that designs and implements sustainable rural solar electrification projects. It is led by Robert Freling, president; Richard LaRue, development director; and Jeff Lahl, project director.
• Association pour le Developpement Economique Social et Culturel de Kalalé (ADESCA)
• International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)
• Stanford University's Center on Food Security and the Environment is the evaluation partner

Published November 11, 2011

Seattle Biochar Working Group

Photograph courtesy Seattle Biochar Working Group

Project location: Talamanca region of Costa Rica (map)

Project goals:

• Introduce a new paradigm of carbon negative biomass energy technology for commercial heating and residential cooking use.
• Establish a value for biochar, which is produced as a by-product by this energy production, in local cash crop agriculture.
• Work with local partners to develop specific expressions of this concept, which can improve economic and environmental heath.

Now in its second year, a pilot project by a group of volunteers from SeaChar (Seattle Biochar Working Group) works with organic coffee growers in the Santos region of Costa Rica to provide micro‐gasifier cook-stoves to migrant coffee pickers to reduce exposure of women and children to smoke from open cooking fires and to produce biochar. Organic coffee farmers are already familiar with biochar, having used it in their compost formulations for the past 10 years. The Estufa Finca project will include a biochar "buy-back" program. This is a powerful incentive to adopt a new technology. The project has a large number of partners, including the National University of Costa Rica (UNA) and APORTES, a women's cooperative that is manufacturing the stoves.

Customer satisfaction surveys and follow-up monitoring conducted during the 2011 harvest showed that user acceptance of the stoves is high. Savings in fuel and cooking time were validated. The next phase of the project will work with a growers cooperative (APPTA) further south in the Talamanca region of Costa Rica to bring stoves to an indigenous population. Each stove can produce about 10 to 30 kilograms (22 to 66 pounds) of biochar a month. While this amount of biochar is not enough to supply the farms, it is useful and effective in vegetable gardens and seedling nurseries. The biochar purchased from stove users will be incorporated in to biochar field trials, designed to develop more effective biochar enhanced organic fertilizers.

SeaChar and its partners see this project as opening the door to further efforts throughout Central America that will develop biomass gasifier energy technologies at many scales that can help mitigate and adapt to climate change and energy shortages by providing heat for cooking and crop drying while expanding the supply of biochar for use in vegetable horticulture, commodity crops such as coffee, cacao and banana, forestry and other agriculture.

The Estufa Finca is micro‐gasifier stove based on the principle of Top Lit UpDraft gasification (TLUD). The process of combustion of solid biomass fuels includes several different stages including pyrolysis (heating in the absence of air that releases gasses), combustion of the gases by combining with air, and finally, gasification and combustion of the remaining charcoal. A gasifier stove differs from common biomass combustion as found in an open fire or a rocket stove, by separating these stages in space and time. In common combustion they are mixed which reduces efficiency and increases pollution. The Estufa Finca can either burn or conserve the char.

Project participants:

• Seattle Biochar Working Group (SeaChar): Art Donnelly, U.S. project director; Tom Ternes, IOM follow-on project manager; Kate Selting, Talamanca project manager
• El centro de educacion agricultura y investigacion
• Asociación Comisión de Mujeres Talamanqueñas
• Asociación de Productores Orgánicos y Turismo Rural Eco Educativo de Los Santos
• Asociación de Pequeños Productores de Talamanca

Published November 11, 2011

African Christians Organization Network

Photograph courtesy African Christians Organization Network

Project location: Bungoma district of Western Kenya (map)

Project goals:

• To promote the use of renewable energy resources and energy conservation at community level.
• To promote soil and environment conservation through agro forestry, application and utilization of biochar practice and environmental education.
• To empower women and youth for sustainable community development.

The African Christians Organization Network (ACON) has been working in Western Kenya since 2000 to empower villagers by providing opportunities for development that are environmentally sustainable. Since 2004, ACON has been focusing their work on how to reduce deforestation while improving soils for local farmers in the area. Part of this solution is improved cook stoves and the use of biochar, a charcoal meant to be added to soils, which can improve soil nutrient retention and water holding capacity as well as sequester carbon.

The Bungoma district of Western Kenya is 30 miles from the Uganda border and near a national forest, as well as Lake Victoria. Villagers living in the area are mainly farmers who rely on annual rains for all irrigation, making water crucial during the dry season. Families generally use a traditional three-stone open fire for cooking, requiring a great deal of firewood taken from forests. To alleviate the pressure on the forest, ACON designed a project that worked with local villagers to promote energy conservation and reduce deforestation through the use of improved cooking stoves.

Salim Mayeki Shaban of ACON designed a "clay" stove that reduces fuel wood consumption by 50% and creates less smoke. Salim estimates that from 2004 - 2009, the group built over 10,000 improved stoves. To fund this work, ACON decided to sell the stoves to the villagers for between $12 to $15 (about 840 to 1050 Kenya shillings). The average amount of fuel wood required on a monthly basis for a Kenyan family of six costs is $20 US, so the stove can pay for itself fairly quickly-based on these costs, ACON marketed the stoves as a money saving device.

As this project took off, ACON brought in experts to design and implement biochar field trials and train local farmers on the application and utilization of biochar. Villagers in the region of Bungoma practice subsistence farming and depend on fertilizers for their crops. They have had recurring serious droughts and Salim wanted to see if using biochar could help with water and nutrient retention in the soil.

The initial improved cook stoves were not biochar‐producing stoves, so the group made biochar by buying wood charcoal from the marketplace, which was then crushed into small pieces.

Since this visit in 2009, ACON has been carrying out community training on the application and utilization of biochar and the importance of biochar in soil. Participants in a training group learn about biochar and set up field trials over the course of four days and then are given biochar to take home with them. Over 750 farmers now have biochar plots in their fields from biochar made in these sessions.

Project participants:

• The African Christians Organization Network: Salim Mayeki Shaban, president and founder
• AirTerra: Rob Lavoie, chief technical officer
• Eventura: Wayne Johnson, president and founder
• Move Against Poverty Organization: John Ahana, executive director

Published November 11, 2011

Habitat for Humanity

Photograph courtesy Habitat for Humanity

Project location: Northeast Washington DC, USA

Project goals:

• Complete six passive house certified row homes
• Provide low-income homeowners with potential to reduce energy bills by 75-90 percent
• Raise awareness of home-building strategy with revolutionary energy-saving technology in presence of federal legislators

DC Habitat is seeking to expand its energy-efficient footprint for the sustainable benefit of our homeowners. Three components contribute to homeownership affordability: mortgage cost; location (the cost of transportation, or living in proximity to where the homeowner works); and the cost of utilities.

The Building Science Behind Passive House Design

Passive House is a performance-based house design system that from a building science perspective is simple and clean. The major components of Passive House Design center first around creating a super-insulated thermal envelope that eliminates all thermal bridging elements which conduct heat and cold transfer from outside the home to inside the home. The super insulated envelope is so airtight that there must be a circulation or ventilation system that basically controls how the house 'breathes,' thus ensuring a fresh air environment that evacuates stale and moist air build-up and replaces it with fresh air from the outside. As the stale air is exhaled, it passes through a heat exchanger called an ERV (Energy Recovery Ventilator), which passes by the incoming air and in the process exchanges the heat or cool temperature with up to 95 percent efficiency.

The thermal bridge free construction should keep the temperature within a range of 64- 77° F, thus limiting the need for supplemental heating and cooling. There will eventually be the option to install PV panels. Homeowner training will be provided as part of a sweat-equity education.

The cost to create the thermal envelope that is super-insulated is estimated to net out at an approximate 10 percent increase over Habitat's present house design and performance metrics. The anticipated net increase to bring the home to passive house standard is around $15,000 - $20,000 per house.

Using the Habitat model, a $15,000 increase to the house price is passed along to the homeowner. In a 0% interest scenario over 30 years, this equates to an increase in the homeowner's house payment of $42 per month. However, the projections are that the utility bills of a Passive House will be reduced by as much as 75-90%. If the utility bill of an average homeowner runs $200 per month, this means that the utility bill savings to the homeowner on average could amount to $150 to $180 per month. Assuming the 75% savings, you can see that from day one the homeowner's net energy savings would be $108 per month ($150- $42).

DC Habitat serves district families that fall within 25-80 percent of area median income (AMI). The last 56 families have averaged 29 percent AMI. The types of people that make up the heads of households of our Habitat families include, cab drivers, housekeepers, government employees (clerical), teachers, healthcare service workers, etc. We provide low or no interest loans combined with volunteer construction, gift in kind donations and as much subsidy as we can locate in order to sell the home at an affordable price, well below market rate.

Project participants:

Habitat for Humanity: Kent Adcock, president and CEO; Richard Algra, director of development

Published November 11, 2011