Energía de España

Este semana yo conocí dos amigas de españa.  Los dos tienen doctorados y una estudiaba energía renovable en españa.  Yo la pregunté ella de la energía en españa y aprendia que la mayoria todavia es de combustíbles de petroleum y gases, y carbón es raro.  Pero ella dijo que tambien hay mucha energía de viento en españa, y a veces mas o menos seisento por cento de la energía en españa es de viento.  ¡Que chevere!  Hay energia hidroelectrica tambien.

                 

This week I met two postdocs from Spain.  One was studying renewable energy in Spain, so we got to talking about where energy comes from there.  Primarily the power plants use petroleum or gas, and carbon is rare.  Wind energy is apparently utilized well there though, and at times it’s possible to get up to 60% of the country’s energy from wind.  There is some hydroelectric power too.

More on rural electrification

It might be interested to examine whether a simple small-scale wind turbine is sufficient for providing power to a small community and consider the costs of implementation.  The cost of a small 2.5 kW wind turbine could be about 3000 soles.  The alternatives include generators, solar panels, connecting the community to the electric grid, or remaining without electricity. 

Considering the last alternative listed first, for a family to remain without electricity, but want to have light to do things after dark, a family would pay around 1 to 2 soles per day for candles, leading to 30 to 60 soles per month.  In more or less one year, they would end up paying the same as for a wind turbine that could power lights for longer than these candles would last. 

Generators are quite popular for families and businesses in Peru without electricity.  These can cost about 500 soles per month to operate.  This means that after six months, the amount paid to operate a generator for that time could have been used on a turbine which would produce free energy after this time. 

We can also think about connecting communities without electricity to the national grid, however, for communities with only a few number of houses, this can be very costly per family, and be much more expensive than implementing a small wind turbine since these families typically do not need much power.

Solar panels are an option.  Some disadvantages to consider are maintenance (keeping them clean), and cost.  Bi-energy systems with solar and wind can be an excellent idea, especially if there is local support for both systems.

There is also always the question of how the technology for rural electrification is paid for.  Of course the families can pay if they are able to either by paying the money up front or a little at a time (and since they can currently pay for candles, the latter method is obviously feasible).  This is similar to how the stoves in Guatemala were sold by the company; they priced the stove with a payment plan that the families would not see any difference in what they were paying per month but would only see the difference in having a newer device.  And technologies that can be used to automatically meter and control the payments can help.  Another method is to obtain government money for electrifying rural communities.  This could be advantageous for politicians to support to get the support of communities, but the implementation of getting government funds to actually pay for the technologies can be difficult.  

Voy a escribir en español mas tarde.

Teaching clean energy in Peru

We recently went down to Lima to fix a wind turbine at a school that has been installed there a few years ago.  We had to install new blades on an existing turbine body that was at the school, so we would not be able to balance the blades on the existing disc for the turbine, a step that is usually done inside the shop where there is no wind and we don’t have to be standing on a roof.  To make this step easier, we tried a new method for preparing the blades.  The original method included adding weight near the center to make sure all of the blades were of the same weight, and then adding weight to places on the disc as necessary to balance the blades.  In the new preparation, when adding weight to make all blades the same weight, the weight was added in strategic locations to make the center of mass of each blade in the same location.  We determined the center of mass by balancing the blades on a fulcrum along two separate lines.  To add weight, holes were drilled into the blades and the appropriate amount of lead was added before filling the holes up with resin.  This new method helped us balance the blades at the site in half a day!  This is a big improvement to the old method.

Nosotros fuimos a Lima para aregular una molina en una escuela que instaló hace pocas años y rompió.  Tenemos que instalar alaves nuevas en una molina que esta en la escuela.  Por esto, no podemos balancear las alaves adentro la fabrica donde no hay viento y no necesitamos estar arriba un techo.  Para majorar el paso de balancear, hicemos un metodo nuevo por la preperación.  En la metodo original, todos tres alaves son lo mismo peso, y si no balancean, ponemos mas peso donde necesita.  Pero in el metodo nuevo, ponemos peso in lugares especial en las alaves para hacer el centro de masa en lo mismo lugar en cada alave.  Encontramos el centro de masa por balanceando la alave, entonces poner mas peso por haciendo huecos y llenar con plomo antes de lenar los huecos con resin otra vez.  Esto metodo nuevo nos ayuda balancear las alaves a la escuela en solomente una media dia.  Mucho mejor de el metodo viejo.

 

The story behind the wind turbine at the school is also pretty interesting.  This wind turbine is at a secondary school that is called “the best secondary school in Peru, and possibly South America.”  The school has a book chosen as its community reading assignment, where everyone at the school reads the book and then the classes can have discussions about it.  A few years ago, the book chosen was The BoyWho Harnessed the Wind, about a boy in a remote African village who heard about wind energy and spent a lot of time reading old books and trying to build a wind turbine from metal scraps he could find.  A student at the school after reading this book then approached the science teacher and suggested that students learn to build wind turbines.  The teacher did just that in her classroom, and went a step further and they found WindAid who helped put a turbine in the school.  The turbine is now a beacon for clean energy.  The science teacher made and teaches an environmental science class and is promoting clean renewable energy as much as she can, her main motivation being that because this is the best school in Peru, she could be teaching the future presidents of Peru, so educating them about clean energy and showing them why it is beneficial can really help the policies that improve the lives of the Peruvians of tomorrow.  I thought this was an interesting story showing how literature, science, engineering, and policy are intertwined.

La historia de porque la escuela tiene una molino es interesante tambien.   La molina esta en una escuela secondaria que se llama “la mejor escuela en Peru, y posiblemente America del Sur.”  La escuela tiene un libro por la comunidad que todos leen y discutimos en las clases.  Haces unas años, el libro fue “El Niño que Empleó la Viento,” sobre un niño de un pueblo de Africa que leó muchas libros de ciencia y trató de contruir una molina con basura de metal.  Dispues de leyo esto libro, un estudiante en la escuela preguntó la maestra de ciencia puede ella enseñar la clase sobre molinas.  La maestra hizo esto, y tambien conosció a WindAid y todos podemos una molina en la escuela. La turbina es un simbolo de energía renovable.  La maestra hizo una clase de ciencia de el medio ambiente y quere favorecer energía limpia y renovable mucho porque esta es la mejor escuela en Peru y posiblemente hay estudiantes que seré presidentes en el futuro.  Entonces, es muy importante enseñarlos sobre energía limpia y mostrarlos como esta energía puede mejorar las vidas de la gente.  Yo pienso esta historia es una bien ejemplo que muestra como literatura, ciencia, ingeneria, y politica mezclan/.