About this Blog

This is the blog for Lincoln's EWB-UK placement in Ujire in Karnatica in Southern India. I am working for SELCO, a solar lighting social enterprise, on the development of a solar food dehydrator, a device used to increase the life of foods. The aim of the placement is to make it fully functional, more efficient and to conduct market research in order to help market the product to customers living in rural areas enabling them to break the poverty cycle.

Wednesday, 21 July 2010

New Arrivals & A SELCO Installation

On Monday, I was able to collect the pieces of plywood from the carpenter, which could then be assembled into a flat-pack dryer. This took longer than anticipated because holes had to be marked and drilled in order for it to be assembled correctly. Just like flat pack furniture in the UK, the dryer proved notoriously difficult to assemble, and I hadn't gone 5 minutes before I broke into a sweat, and stripped the heads of countless screws with a screwdriver too small for the job. I will try again later in the week.

Another arrival was an intern into the lab from the USA, who would be staying just a few days to visit some SELCO installations and make notes of peoples energy needs.

Yesterday, myself and another intern, joined a couple of local SELCO technicians, who were installing a small PV system in a small house / hut. A solar system was suitable for this location as a grid connection would have required the owner pay for the erection of five electricity poles. We traveled there with five people and all the equipment, crammed into an auto. The equipment had to be carried across the paddy fields and up a hill to the house before the technicians set to work. The farmer kindly showed us is plantation of rubber trees and led us across his beautiful fields in the rain. Check out the pictures! (click the slide show above)

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