How Biomass Gasification is Powering Liberia’s Future
Liberia power generation report for March, 2015 The Biomass Brothers in Kakata, Liberia continue to impress the locals, as well as the APL mothership, with their dedication and technical success in the Booker Washington Institute (BWI) vocational school power house. This facility received the first three Version 5.0 Power Pallets, to power their school and surrounding community, and it’s been almost a full year since they cut the ribbon on their facility. So, how are they doing? As with many development projects, it’s been a year of logistics challenges, machine fixes, funding ambiguity and heroics, along with an Ebola crises……
El Jardín Botánico, Bogotá, Colombia – June 2015
Two PP20 biomass gasifier-gensets from ALL Power Labs were purchased by system Integrator, Tetra Tech, with the help of a USAID grant, and installed in the José Celestino Mutis Botanical Garden of Bogotá. Located in the capital, it is Colombia’s largest botanical garden and serves both as a recreation and research center. Our biomass gensets are part of a program to create a sophisticated demonstration site featuring multiple forms of renewable power generation integrated into a micro-grid, including solar arrays and energy storage. The Garden is a municipally owned park has an emphasis on Andean and Páramo ecosystems, featuring plants……
GEE Energy, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China – June 2015
Shenzhen Green and Clear World Environmental Engineering Inc (GEE) Located in the Yantian District, International Creative Harbor, in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, GEE are using their Power Pallet to develop sustainable waste management solutions. They focus on research and development on the processing of municipal solid waste (MSW) especially its conversion into useful power. MSW incineration as an a energy and waste management solution is growing very rapidly in Chinese at pace with their booming economy. Efforts by the Chinese government to meet GHG standards by reducing their dependence on coal as their primary power source have resulted in generous feed……
Booker Washington Institute, Kakata, Liberia – February 2015
BWI’s Renewable Energy Center in Kakata, Liberia is doing daily runs of three PP20’s to supply a large portion of their campus with power. Planning to begin a commercial mini grid project, BWI REC hopes to begin selling power at affordable rates to a even larger service area adjacent to the campus, and hopes to become self sustaining. Too remote to be included in the unreliable national power grid, BWI has had to use expensive diesel power in their attempt to reboot their institution after its devastation during the recent civil wars. But Liberia is coming back. Kakata was at the center of the……
SURE Green Island, Palawan, Philippines – February 2015
Green Island is a village island located about 14 kilometers off the coast of Roxas, Palawan. It is a small flat island with an area of only about an eighth of a square kilometer with an estimated population of 375. The main source of livelihood is fishing and seaweed farming. Due to the island’s remote location, potable water is shipped form the mainland by boat, and electricity has been supplied by 25 kVa diesel generator which only serves some parts of the island intermittently, depending on the supply of costly diesel. The project is intended to begin with a pilot supplying the area of the island that……
Lighting Liberia on Biomass-grand opening
Lighting Liberia – for $.08 a kilowatt hour Development work is notoriously hard, especially in places struggling to recover from civil unrest. That’s why we’re so pleased to tell you about the latest chapter in our work in Liberia, in partnership with Winrock International and USAID. As you may recall, about a year ago we started a project at the Booker Washington Institute in Kakata, Liberia, to turn eager students into renewable energy experts while providing cheap energy from waste biomass, on a campus thoroughly looted during the civil war. Fast forward to last month, and the barren room in……
Limyè Pa w, Tuffet, Haiti – December 2013
Haitian corncobs purchased from local farmers fuel a Power Pallet located in the small village of Tuffet in Haiti. Limyè Pa w, a labor of love created by Ben Shell, Dan Bierenbaum and Duquesne Fednard, is using its Power Pallet to supply power to the community with an innovative microgrid system. They are building a self-sustaining business selling electricity in small prepaid units to local homes and businesses, where access to power has been largely unavailable. Read or listen to an NPR story about their project. [caption id="attachment_8611" align="alignnone" width="300"] courtesy Carrie Kahn/NPR[/caption]…
Chelinda Lodge, Malawi, East Africa – December 2013
Located in the middle of the Malawi’s Nyika National Park at an altitude of over 7500 feet on the Nyika Plateau, the Chelinda Lodge is a remote eco and game resort. Serviced only by aircraft and almost 50 miles of tortuous backroads. This elevates the cost of diesel to power their generators resulting in electricity costs of over $.50 cents USD per kilowatt hour, and promising to do nothing by go even higher. This meant they could only afford to run their generator four hours a day on diesel. But working in partnership with the group Total Land Care and……
Mission Goundi, Republic of Chad, Central Africa – September 2013
Installed in the Fall of 2013, this project based out of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia – BarcelonaTech, in Spain, plans to install a PP20 in the small town of Goundi in Chad. With support from the Center of Technology Transfer (CITCEA-UPC) at BarcelonaTech and the NGO, Misión y Desarrollo para Goundi, this project aims to build a power system fueled by the corncob waste that is plentiful around Goundi. The electricity they generate is intended first and foremost to power their water supply system and local hospital, built 20 years ago, which currently uses wasteful expensive and polluting diesel……
APL in the Field: Powertainer install at UNM Morris
Bear Kaufmann, Jeff Tiedeken and Jim Mason are at University of Minnesota, Morris this week installing the Powertainer and setting it up for its initial runs onsite. This has been a long haul, and we’re very happy to finally have it here and soon begin pumping biomass power back into the grid. A big thank you goes to Lowell Rasmussen, Jim Barbour and Dave Aronson at the UMM for making this project possible, as well as their general dedication to proving small scale biomass energy for midwestern ag applications. As well a huge thank you to APL team member Nick Monahan……