IkoStar

Ok, there’s this google thing over there —->

Where you get to make up this thing to save the world and so on. So I’ll do that then:

AK47 design principles applied to energy generation : A Solar/Bio-fuel Micro-CHP Generator.

This is a Stirling engine:

These are Stirling engines:

• Stirling engines are simple, contained systems that convert temperature differences into movement.
• CHP stands for “combined heat and power” - systems that generate heat (which is what about 80% of our energy is used for) and electricity.

Stirling engines were invented about 120 years ago as an alternative to steam (which was quite dangerous) but were sidelined in favour of the internal combustion engine (which has turned out to be even more dangerous). Now in the 21st Century after 100 years of oil-wars and planet-shagging levels of pollution, they’re beginning to make a comeback. Solar-Stirling is currently about twice efficient as solar electric cells.

There are hundreds of hobby kits you can buy/build and several commercial applications have emerged recently, eg: big solar farms and small domestic units.

The good thing about these systems is that they demonstrate proof of concept; the problem with them is that are that they are big and expensive, designed specifically for western markets.

The world doesn’t need big and expensive, it needs small and cheap, and it needs it now. Yesterday. The AK47 has proliferated because it’s simple: made with mass/locally-produceable wood and metal parts, and it can be repaired in the field, under difficult conditions etc. I think this design philosphy combined with open-source design, applied to decentralised energy generation could be a biosphere-saver.

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The advantages of de-centralised power generation are:

• Small and modular is good systems design : When the technology advances, new units can simply be swapped in/out
• Massively reduced transmission costs : currently losses are at around 10%
• Reduced greenhouse emissions / improved efficiency
• Reduced geopolitical fighting over limited or centrally controlled resources.
• Robustness : No massive power-cuts.
• Safety : No nuclear leaks or meltdowns.
• Independence : People aren’t tied to govt or corporate systems. They can look after themselves.
• No need to wait : while governments or utilities to “debate” about what’s best for us, the market can simply route around them.
• Existing monolithic infrastructure, both physical and political need not be affected/involved.
• A range of possible fuel sources - reduced dependence on resources controlled elsewhere.

For as long as I can remember, the holy grail of energy generation has been nuclear fusion, which seems like a nice idea, but this still leaves us vulnerable to all of the points in the list above.

Greenpeace has recently begun to advocate CHP combined-heat-and-power-chp on a community level, as is currently used (for example) in Scandinavia and Holland - which is good news, and although progress is being made on this front, it’s still slow because there are fairly large infrastructural (eg: digging up the streets) obstacles, as well as good old fashioned political torpor and cronyism in the way. Household scale CHP has many of the advantages of community scale, without having to rely on local government for implementation.

So my google-saves-the-world idea is a stirling engine that is solar during the day with surplus going to batteries and hot water…. but it can run on bio-fuels/wood pellets at night if need be. A CHP system that is cheap and simple (and small) enough to be set up and run anywhere in the world, from the galley of a mega-yacht to a tent in a refugee camp and anywhere in between. Your place for example.

The focus of this project is not (however) a domestic appliance for the west - that’s just a (billion dollar) biproduct. The core of this project is a simple design which is also available and usable in the developing world, where there are uses beyond simply generating heat and electricity. Some examples of possible alternative uses:

• Water pumps
• Water purification (a cool example of a bike-driven water purification system)

Both of which could potentially save tens of millions of lives, and certainly raise the living standards of huge (really huge) numbers of people.

And of course on top of that, there’s still the electricity generation.

Here’s an example of a wind-powered rope pump. What I have in mind is something similar in scale and complexity to this, but using solar/stirling.

So that’s it.

We already have an incredible amount of energy falling out of the sky, for free, every day. We don’t need new sources of energy, we have enough already. We’re just not collecting it.