A team project looking into possibilities for power generation in a floating, informal settlement called Claverito, in Iquitos, Peru. The format of the class is Landscape Architects teamed up with students from other disciplines (like me, Environmental Science), to collaborate on solutions that improve the ecological and human health for this community. The below is what I worked on for the midterm, with the final over here.
The people currently use makeshift power cables patched into the municipal grid, combined with kerosene generators and kerosene lamps. It’s all very dangerous and polluting, so my team looked for alternatives. We initially looked into hydropower, but section of Amazon tributary they live on is fairly stagnant. Our solutions:
- Follow literoflight.org‘s example to provide interior lighting during the day.
- Use a GravityLight, which residents could possibly build themselves from scrap parts (except for low-wattage LED bulbs, which would need to be shipped in).
- PotatoLights for supplemental energy.
Cooked potatoes produce more electricity than raw, it turns out. I was able to get mine to produce enough to make a tiny red LED light up. Not enough to really do any good, but a neat proof of concept.
Team-member Russ made a functional GravityLight:
And team-member Sharon made some lovely boards:
