DIY solar panel maker heads to Africa for charity
Jane Wakefield,
BBC,
Dec 23, 2011
When you read or watch post-Apocalypic science fiction there's always ambient technology - solar panels, for example, jury-rigged with spare parts to power old cellular phones in an ad hoc mesh network. projects like this are how those parts got there. Mark Kragh takes solar panel rejects ("Slight chips in the corner render the panels useless for traditional solar energy use") and converts them into home phone charging systems. The he ships them off to Africa where they're needed. "For many in Africa there is little access to electricity due to mains power shortages. Infrastructure has not kept pace with the explosion in mobile phone ownership." Charity takes us only so far, though. We need not only more projects like this but also some way to convert our economy back from the massive megaprojects that make basic infrastructure inaccessible to those without the cash and toward a much more distributed system and less opaque of micro-scale projects that do things like create energy, facilitate communication, grow food, and transport people. Related: makinga phone charger from scrap.
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