The document discusses key technology options and innovations for "Smart Village" development. It covers emerging areas in energy sources like biomass, biofuels, solar, hydro, and geothermal. Energy storage innovations include batteries, liquid fuels, and thermal storage. Promising areas in energy use include efficient devices, innovative communications, and information technologies. The document concludes that while technology is evolving rapidly, researchers often overlook rural energy access applications of new innovations.

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LET’S TALK
TECHNOLOGIES…
Dr Claudia Canales
12 June 2015

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WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT, AND WHAT’S NEW?
What are some of the key technology options for
“Smart Village” innovation?
What is some of the blue-sky research in those areas?
• These are not “answers”, they are (non-exhaustive) signposts to
guide you in your own investigations
• We are technology “neutral”, though ideally technology choices
should be sustainable (although sometimes eg a sustainable
energy/diesel genset hybrid might be best)

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1. ENERGY SOURCES
• Biomass
– wood/charcoal for cooking
– conversion into biogas
• Biofuel
– eg ethanol, biodiesel
• Solar (almost all energy is ultimately from the sun anyway!)
– photovoltaic
– solar heat (indirect power generation, heating, cooking)
• Hydro
– physical energy eg water mills
– hydroelectricity
• Wind
– physical energy eg windmills
– electricity

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1.1 ENERGY INNOVATION
• Biomass
– efficiency (better cookstoves, more effective biogas production)
• Biofuel
– 2nd and 3rd generation biofuels (eg lignocellulosic biofuel)
• Solar
– higher efficiency panels (eg perovskite)
– lower cost (eg thin film organic)
• Hydro
– low-tech innovation (eg low power “floating” hydro)

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1.2 OTHER ENERGY SOURCES
• Geothermal
– heat for power generation, heating
• Tidal/Wave power
• Physical power from humans/animals
– treadmills, bicycle dynamos, donkey-driven dynamos…
and more far-fetched possibilities…
• Ocean temperature
– see “ocean thermal energy conversion”
• Heat (solar, geothermal etc)
– Stirling engines

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2. ENERGY STORAGE
• Don’t store it
– anchor loads that only need to run when the sun shines or the water flows…
• Batteries
– cutting edge research in industry and public sector
• Liquid/gaseous fuels
– Biodiesel, biogas etc
More far-fetched possibilities…
• Thermal (eg heat something up during the day, use the heat at night)
• Kinetic storage (eg flywheels)

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3. ENERGY USE
• Efficient devices
– lower power fridges, laptops, tv’s, grinders, welders etc. Electric motors are very inefficient
– LED’s for lighting (possibly in the future UV LEDs could purify water)
• Innovative communications technology
– Facebook’s internet.org project (satellite based)
– Google’s Loon project (balloon based)
• Innovative information use
– Agricultural knowledge, remote education, democratic engagement etc
• Innovative devices
– Remote medical diagnostic kits

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4. OTHERS
• Distribution/power engineering
– low voltage DC grids
– distributed generation, eg network together lots of individual solar home systems
in a village to share power with neighbours
• Entrepreneurship
– eg mobile phone technology for payments/metering/system control
• Innovative financing technologies
etc

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CONCLUSIONS
• Technology is evolving fast
• There is a lot of research that we (and others) don’t know about
• New technology opens the door to new impacts on the ground
• Often, (especially academic) researchers have not considered the
rural energy access application of their “hi-tech” research
• You can be an advocate for rural energy access and use!