Kenya Implementation

Peter Muhoro returned from MPala last week. The staff, who normally do not have good and reliable access to charging their batteries, are thrilled with the bicycle generator. They are using a car alternator (whereas Ghana is using a motor cycle dynometer). One villager ran to get his 12 V battery and immediately charged it up in 30 minutes.

Initial measurements show that the bicycle generator (with car alternator and strong healthy biker) is generating 30 Amps of current for a 12 volt battery. This is 360 Watts of human power output! Potentially this is not sustainable because the power input must be greater than this amount and very demanding on the body. However, in Kenya they have marathon runners who have redefined what a champion athlete can sustain in terms of power output. Still care should be taken to not overtax the human body.

Now Peter is having people contact him about the merry-go-round generator. Peter wants to write grants for this, but we are both wondering where we should start. I want to focus on empowering all the technical schools and technicians and Peter wants to focus on market development and implementation. Hopefully together we can find someone or some organization to support this work. The technicians do not have money to build these devices unless they know they have a market, but we cannot create a market without having someone pilot the devices.