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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!