Nathan G. Johnson

Risk Analysis and Safety Evaluation of Biomass Cookstoves

Combustion of biomass in open fires and ad hoc unventilated stoves is the primary form of household energy for two to three billion people worldwide. These cookstoves have significant health, social, and economic impacts on poor families in developing countries. These impacts include disease, injury, excess time spent gathering fuel, deforestation, and high fuel costs relative to income. In an attempt to address many of these problems numerous non-governmental organizations have developed several biomass cookstove designs in the past five to ten years. These designs have generally focused on increasing fuel efficiency, and to a lesser degree, reducing particulate emissions. This emphasis has been driven largely by the availability of relatively straight forward fuel efficiency tests for biomass cookstoves developed 10–20 years ago and the ability of researchers to adapt current air pollution testing methods for stoves. In contrast there are no safety standards or hazard evaluations available for biomass cookstoves. Because of this the safety of the cookstove is seldom explicitly considered as a part of the design process. This paper addresses the basic safety issues that should be considered in the design of biomass stoves used in developing countries, describes the reasoning behind these safety issues, and proposes a set of safety guidelines for testing and evaluating stove safety. These guidelines are intended for testing and evaluating in the field as well as in the design lab.Copyright

Establishing Consumer Need and Preference for Design of Village Cooking Stoves

In some villages the use of wood cooking stoves accounts for more than three-quarters of total village energy use. Because of this the design of clean, affordable, and desirable cooking stoves can have a dramatic impact on human health and the local economy. Unfortunately, too often development projects fail. For example, an estimated 30% of water projects in sub-Saharan Africa have failed prematurely in the last 20 years, and only 10% of cooking stove programs started in the 1980s were operational two years after startup. Similar anecdotal evidence suggests a mixed record of success for other energy, infrastructure, health, and sanitation projects in the developing world. In part, these failures occur because of a lack of design questions and design methods to identify consumer need and preference during the problem definition phase of the product design. Because isolated rural villages are generally far from the design engineers’ previous experiences it is even more important to gather in-depth primary data in isolated rural villages. Based on data collected during in-depth field visits to villages in rural West Africa during a village energy study this paper proposes a structured process for collecting the data necessary to design cookstoves that meet local needs, fit within local contexts, and create an aspirational experience that fosters a sustainable solution.Copyright

Empowering Smart Communities: Electrification, Education, and Sustainable Entrepreneurship in IEEE Smart Village Initiatives

Electrification is indisputably one of the most effective ways to provide billions of people with clean water, sanitation, access to education, medical services, and communication technologies, which are objectives recently outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Electrification is also one of the integral parts in creating a solid educational foundation for vocational training and collaborative worldwide idea-sharing among current and future visionaries, entrepreneurs, and leaders striving to bring their communities together in creating community-based infrastructure and sustainable business opportunities.

Comparing Power System Architectures for Domestic Lighting in Isolated Rural Villages with HOMER

Selecting power system architectures for rural electrification is a process dependent on several technical, economic, and human resource design requirements. PV-generator-battery systems are common for large village loads while PV-battery systems tend to be preferred for smaller village loads. This study compares three power system architectures (PV-battery, PV-generator-battery, generator only) for part-time evening domestic lighting in a small isolated rural village. Although the evening load profile disfavors PV systems, the small load also disfavors generators. Multiple technical and financial figures of merit are used to compare systems. Detailed consideration is given to the relationship between power availability and power cost, a metric uncommon to rural electrification studies. The net present cost of the generator only system and hybrid system is invariant with changes in annual unmet load allowance. The net present cost of the PV-battery system decreases with increases in unmet load-the higher granularity in the installed capacity of PV-battery systems allows reductions in system cost if project stakeholders allow power shortages for evening lighting. This design consideration can reduce the high initial of PV-battery systems. For the domestic lighting load modeled in the study the PV-battery architecture becomes the lowest cost option for an unmet load allowance of 1% or greater.

Sustainable and Market-Based Analyses of Cooking Technologies in Developing Countries

Over two billion persons worldwide use biomass as their primary form of energy in household cooking. This creates significant adverse consequences to families in developing nations that use stoves made without technical advancements commonly used in the industrialized world. The often simple, ad-hoc stoves lead to harmful side effects including disease, pollution, injury, and deforestation. Further negative consequences arise in household economics when considering losses in labor, time spent gathering fuel, and high fuel costs relative to income. Because of this much research over the past 10-20 years has been conducted with developing better household cooking methods. Findings from these efforts produced more effective stoves to accommodate the needs of impoverished families. Many of these projects began with philanthropic interests and grants to aid the worlds poor. However outside of lump-sum funds for materials and labor there is often be little available to sustain the technical or human resources needed for continued stove utilization. One method to approach sustainability involves a market-based approach to better insure continuation of the benefits of improved cookstoves. This paper provides an assessment of the benefits of advanced cooking devices to both consumers and producers. Further investigations demonstrate consumer and producer impediments in collaborating for mutual benefit. Through realization of the interests and constraints facing both sides, plausible processes can be drawn for holistic improvement of communities in relation to household cooking. This paper also provides various options for intervention and start-up as potential methods in creating sustainable markets for safe, cost-effective, and efficient stoves.Copyright

Fueling Sustainability: The Exponential Impact of Empowering Off-Grid Communities

Alternative means for a basic electricity service are needed for the worlds off-grid communities. Reliable access to electricity is widely regarded as a keystone to overcoming poverty, dramatically enhancing quality of life, and encouraging sustainable community prosperity. Such access is necessary to achieve other benefits such as education, public-health services or lean water and sanitation, and opportunities for participating in the global economy. IEEE Smart Village, organized in 2010, exists to empower off-grid communities through education and the development of sustainable local energy businesses (microutilities) that are owned and operated by local entrepreneurs. IEEE Smart Village offers technical solutions, technical training, innovative business models, and entrepreneurship training to establish a local business that is technically and financially sustainable. Seed funding is provided to local nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners for microutility equipment, and, through IEEE Smart Villages incubator process, local entrepreneurs receive training and support to grow a self-sustaining business of the scope and character that best fulfills the needs of customers in their specific communities. All profits and benefits remain within the local communities.

Measuring air quality using wireless self-powered devices

High concentrations of carbon monoxide and particulate matter can cause respiratory disease, illness, and death in high doses. Air pollution is a concern in many urban areas of emerging markets that rely on outdated technologies for transportation and electricity generation; rural air quality is also a concern when noting the high prevalence of products of incomplete combustion resulting from open fires for cooking and heating. Monitoring air quality is an essential step to identifying these and other factors that affect air quality, and thereafter informing engineering and policy decisions to improve the quality of air. This study seeks to measure changes in air quality across spatial and temporal domains, with a specific focus on emerging markets and the developing world. A prototype, low-cost air quality monitoring device has been developed to measure the concentrations of particulate matter, ozone, and carbon monoxide at a rate of one sample per minute. The device communicates data wirelessly via cell towers or using a nearby Wi-Fi network, and can run off-grid using a solar PV-battery system. The device can be replicated and deployed across regions for high-fidelity emissions monitoring to explore the effect of anthropogenic and environmental factors on intra-hour air quality. Hardware and software used in the device is described, and the wireless data communication protocols and capabilities are discussed.

Improving Irrigation in Remote Areas: Multi-Objective Optimization of a Treadle Pump

Water-lifting technologies in rural areas of the developing world have enormous potential to stimulate agricultural and economic growth. The treadle pump, a human-powered low-cost pump designed for irrigation in developing countries, can help farmers maximize financial return on small plots of land by ending their dependency on rain-fed irrigation systems. The treadle pump uses a suction piston to draw groundwater to the surface by way of a foot-powered treadle attached to each suction piston. Current treadle pump designs lift water from depths up to 7 meters at a flow-rate of 1–5 liters per second. This work seeks to optimize the design of the Dekhi style treadle pump, which has gained significant popularity due to its simplicity. A mathematical model of the working fluid and treadle pump structure has been developed in this study. Deterministic optimization methods are then employed to maximize the flow rate of the groundwater pumped, maximize the lift height, and minimize the volume of material used for manufacturing. Design variables for the optimization included the dimensions of the pump, well depth, and speed of various parts of the system. The solutions are subject to constraints on the geometry of the system, the bending stress in the treadles, and ergonomic factors. Findings indicate that significant technical improvements can be made on the standard Dekhi design, such as increasing the size of the pump cylinders and hose, while maintaining a standard total treadle length. These improvements could allow the Dekhi pump to be implemented in new regions and benefit additional rural farmers in the developing world.Copyright

Techno-Economic Design of Off-Grid Domestic Lighting Solutions Using HOMER

Kerosene, candles, and disposable batteries are commonplace in the developing world for rural domestic lighting. These technologies come with negative health and environmental effects that are well documented and often form the basis for engineering design. The immediate and near-term concerns that families experience on a daily basis are also important — economics, quality of light, and quality of service. Families in off-grid rural villages often spend more than half of their energy-related expenditures on domestic lighting. Many technologies have been implemented to provide low-cost and renewable power for lighting, yet these efforts have had a mixed record of success due to persistent financial barriers, issues of consumer acceptance and adoption, and a variety of technical complications. The incidence of these problems can be reduced by completing a techno-economic comparison of alternatives during conceptual design. This paper compares three major categories of off-grid domestic lighting projects: (1) centralized electrification with a micro-grid, (2) battery charging stations, and (3) solar lanterns. The HOMER Energy software is used to compare these options using data gathered from rural villages in Africa. To offer a comparison to existing options available, this paper provides a full financial comparison to a base case — kerosene lanterns — to suggest financing strategies and business models for the options investigated.Copyright

Understanding Rural Village Energy Needs and Design Constraints

Today the primary challenge confronting engineers is to develop clean, sustainable technologies that can meet the needs of all of the world’s people. Traditionally this effort has focused on meeting the needs of the developed world. It is generally assumed that products needed for the developing world already exist or are relatively simple and hence do not require significant engineering design effort. As a consequence, many of the products intended to meet the needs of the poor miss the mark and do not meet their needs. This is particularly true in the design of products and processes intended to address the energy needs of the rural poor. Too often a set of standard assumptions is used, resulting in poor problem definition. And, because the design problem is not well defined, the resulting products and processes fail. Throughout the developing world it is common to find village water and energy projects that have failed. To design products and processes that meet the energy needs of the rural poor, the critical first step in the design process is a detailed in-village study of energy production and consumption dynamics. Quantifying village energy dynamics provides insight into the unfulfilled or unsatisfied needs of the consumer, establishes the design constraints, aids the engineer and the community members in prioritizing needs, and builds trust with the local community. This paper presents a field methodology developed to understand the energy needs of a rural sub-Saharan village of 700 people and discusses how this field methodology was used to establish the design constraints needed for a comprehensive energy solution.Copyright