Partnership with Living Energy (podcast)

driven by daylight, doing great things

I had a chance recently to interview Alexis Zeigler, founder of Living Energy Farm and Living Energy Lights.

Alexis and his collaborators have done groundbreaking work supplying communities with extremely robust off-grid energy systems that are super-efficient and low cost for running not only household appliances but also major workshop tools and machinery as well as agricultural equipment.

They have a demonstration project in Virginia, USA - where they live and use the systems they develop on a daily basis - and they also work with grassroots groups in low-resource areas of Jamaica and Puerto Rico.

I’ve hinted about this in previous posts, but we’re building a new laboratory/workshop for practical water-sanitation R&D at our base of operations. I’m so impressed with the innovation and creativity of Alexis and co. at Living Energy that we’re now planning to run our workshop R&D facility on on off-grid, “daylight drive” model like theirs. The objectives are for us to gain hands-on experience with these methods and begin to incorporate efficient daylight drive and DC electrical systems with our water-sanitation projects in a comprehensive sustainable development package.

We have done a few off-grid solar-PV projects over the years. For example here are a few photos from one in a remote area of Karen State (eastern Burma) where we set up a solar powered pump to deliver water from the river to a hillside community outpost of the Karen Women’s Organization:

One big challenge in this location is that the level of the river changes so much between the dry season and the rainy season. So we affixed the pump to a bamboo raft that could go up and down with the water level.

We set up the system to pump water into storage tanks at the top of the hillside community, and then gravity-feed down from there to household and through a treatment system (the usual gravel —> bio-sand —> biochar sequence) to provide water for drinking and other household uses.

We have lots more photos and info on that specific project in Karen State so let us know in the comments if you’d like to know more. This area has been impacted by fighting since the military coup three years ago. We’re hoping it will be safe to return for an assessment visit over winter 2024/2025…

Over the years as we’ve focused on water and sanitation systems we’ve become increasingly aware of the potential for off-grid energy supply, not just for powering water pumps but for a wide variety of community and household applications. However, the available equipment and methods have seemed too complicated, fragile, and expensive to be practical in a lot of the areas where we have worked. Now with the benefit of the pioneering work done by Alexis and his colleagues at Living Energy developing systems that are more robust and affordable, we will be able to offer a more comprehensive package of lean development technologies that meet energy needs along with needs for water and sanitation in an integrative manner. Exciting stuff!

Have a listen to the conversation and let us know what you think!

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