tagged w/ grid
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The upcoming Rio+20 conference on sustainable development will try to identify solutions to worsening resource scarcity and climate change, but Habiba Rage may already be holding one in the palm of her hand.
The 38-year-old from Alago Alba in Kenya’s North Eastern Region has overcome her village’s lack of connection to the electricity grid with a cell phone that uses solar energy to recharge.
“Our village does not have electricity,” says the mother of four. “It is very difficult to own a mobile phone because of the energy it needs to keep working.”
Habiba needs a phone for her livelihood as a trader including to keep track of stock arriving from Isiolo, the nearest urban center. Attacks by bandits along the 110 km (70 mile) route are not uncommon.
Like many others in this marginalised region, she has long found it hard to stay charged up and in touch.
But communications are now getting faster and more reliable, thanks to Rage’s phone, which takes advantage of the scorching sun.
The phone was invented by telecommunications company Safaricom (owned by the UK’s Vodafone) and Kenya’s Mobitelea Ventures.
It is fitted with a charger that absorbs and stores energy directly from the sun. Users do not need a mains connection to charge their phones, nor do they have to travel long distances to the nearest shopping centre to pay for the same service.
The gadget is not only relatively affordable but environmentally friendly since it is manufactured from recycled electronic waste, officials say.
“It is a brilliant innovation,” said Michael Odera, director of the climate change office in Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources. “It meets environmental goals and also deals with problems linked to increasing power outages in the country.”
URBAN AND RURAL APPEAL
According to Odera, the phone is particularly useful among rural communities where there is no mains electricity, but it also serves the needs of the urban poor who are faced with electricity rationing. The phone’s price tag of 1,500 Kenyan shillings ($18) is about half the cost of the cheapest conventional cell phones.
It is an innovation that may help to make poor Kenyans like Habiba less marginalised, according to a recent report by Christian Aid.
The international agency estimates that only 5 percent of Kenya’s rural areas and 51 percent of the urban population have access to electricity.
The Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) estimates that current capacity is 1,300 MW, greater than the total demand of 1,100 MW. But industrial growth means that demand threatens to outstrip supply, according to the Kenya Association of Manufacturers.
Meanwhile, many Kenyans cannot afford electricity because the cost of getting a mains connection can be as high as $600.
The Kenyan government is paying increasing attention to the potential of solar power as a renewable energy resource as it seeks to meet its population’s energy needs in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way.
More at the linkThe upcoming Rio+20 conference on sustainable development will try to identify... more
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Apparently living off the grid, off the land and without government assistance is now a crime that can land you in jail and cause you to lose your home.
Government officials across the country are forming so called “nuisance abatement teams” to intimidate people into giving up their land or conforming to the governments demands and hooking back into the grid. Counties across the country are actually jailing people for living the way they want to live.
I was alerted to this video by a reader and was troubled and sickened by what the poor people in the California Desert are being forced to deal with. From being threatened with jail time if they don’t hook back into the grid to being thrown in jail because the county didn’t like the look of their homes, the people in the deserts of Los Angeles County are being terrorized by their government.
http://offgridsurvival.com/livingoffthegridcrime/Apparently living off the grid, off the land and without government assistance is now... more
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"Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself." - Elbert Hubbard
"Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil." - Anatole France
"Art is the daughter of freedom." - Friedrich Schiller"Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will... more
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"Experience taught me that working families are often just one pay check away from economic disaster. And it showed me first-hand the importance of every family having access to good health care." - Dave Obey
Original: 36"h x 36"w ink on Acrylic Skin: $648"Experience taught me that working families are often just one pay check away... more
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Think of it as the Autobahn of wind power.
To retain their position as leaders in the clean energy race, Germany, a nation that produces more wind power than in any other European country, is planning an energy superhighway. The wind power corridor will run the length of the country from north to south, and will serve to connect Germany's growing wind energy supply with high energy demand regions.
Learn more: http://t.co/UT6dLKsThink of it as the Autobahn of wind power.
To retain their position as leaders in... more
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"I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago." - Edgar Allan Poe"I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have... more
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"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours." - Wayne Dyer
"A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode." - Chanakya"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours." - Wayne... more
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Get your chargers ready! The President and CEO of the Electrification Coalition shares his innovation on cars that won't have you running to the pump.Get your chargers ready! The President and CEO of the Electrification Coalition shares... more
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