The Bicycle Generator

A quick internet search returns many bicycle generators, mostly for teaching purposes.  Yet, in spite of this information, there were more than a few people back home that expressed their doubt that a bicycle can create electricity.  I am proud to say that today our bicycle produces approximately 12V and 6.5 amps, or 80 watts.  To give you a sense of scale, CFL lightbulb that consumes 22-watts puts out as much light as a 100-watt incandescent lightbulb.  With 30 watts, my notebook can be powered and also charge the battery, my ancient, gigantic laptop consumes 75 watts, and my cell phone uses approximately 2.5 watts.

The bicycle generator comprises two systems - mechanical and electrical.  The mechanical system is built on a makeshift bicycle frame, and uses the traditional front gear by the pedals connected by a bicycle chain to the back freewheel.  The freewheel shares a shaft with a large pulley (the flywheel), which is connected to the motor by a v-belt.  The first bicycle was built with a larger flywheel and filled with concrete to increase the moment of inertia.  This system was connected to a car alternator.  There were 2 problems with this system. First, a car alternator really only works for an output of less than 30 watts, so when it was connected to the battery it became impossible to pedal.  The second problem was that the belt on the wheel and the motor were not compatible, and there was quite a bit of slippage:

According to the internet, it's possible to get up to 200 watts out of the system, and ours is only producing 80 watts.  The technician wanted to try adding another flywheel to the system:

As you might imagine, this extra pulley made it too difficult to bike.  The second pulley was taken off, and we reverted to the original system.  The electrical part of the system begins with a permanent magnet dynamo, also known as a low RPM DC motor.

When we measured the voltage directly from the motor, it was quite high and fluctuated quite a bit.  Our technician spent many days searching in the market for a voltage regulator, only to find the one he purchased was broken and couldn't be fixed.  He then purchased another one that eventually worked once we hooked it up to a small light bulb that acts as a switch to prevent the battery from discharging.

At one point, we even tried a charge regulator used with solar panels, but eventually reverted back to the car regulator.

Our next steps with this project are twofold.  First, we are currently working with 2 electrical engineers to hook the bicycle up to a computer program called LabVIEW, so that we can see the variation in power over time, and across different users to get a better sense of the capabilities of the system, and how it is used by users.  Secondly, we are building a second generator on a mountain bike frame using a gear box.  We are hoping to create more power with this system, and hoping that the cost will be kept down by using bicycle frames instead of building our own.  Our final prototype will probably be some sort of combination of the two systems.  Connecting these systems to the computer will allow us to better quantify the amount of power we are producing, and help identify areas of improvement.

The importance of Electricity

I remember a conversation with a friend over a beer in Ann Arbor shortly after I returned from almost 3 years in Africa.  She challenged my drive to work in Africa, more specifically my desire to bring small scale electricity systems to rural Africa.  Why do they need electricity, she asks?  It's a legitimate question.  A lot of Americans still picture Africa as an almost mythological place where people live in seclusion with no exposure to Western culture and the only light they need is the moonlight.  They believe if we bring electricity to Africa, we will somehow be "westernising" them, or selfishly "making them like us".  After all, illiteracy isn't a new phenomenon, and they've survived this long.  I struggled to see it her way, but I've seen so much evidence to the contrary.

In Kadiaradugu, Mali, where I lived for two years with no electricity or running water, a village with a population of 270 people, there were only a few people who could read, and nobody could read at a level that Americans would consider "literate".  Diarrhea, malaria, malnutrition, infections affecting whole limbs, and many other diseases are rampant.  There is no school in the village, so primary school children walk 1 km, and if they move on to secondary school, they have to bike 8 km, assuming their families can afford bicycles.  Most students didn't make it that far, and almost none made it to the high school.  It's true that the community members were amazingly happy despite the everyday struggle to keep themselves and their families alive.  It is a myth, however, that they are somehow cut off from Western society.  Most men had cell phones, whether or not they could afford to buy credit or use it properly.  They also had small flashlight bulbs they hooked up to 4-D cell batteries to see at night.  The chief had a solar panel hooked to a car battery, which is where I charged my cell phone, until it broke.  Another man had a TV that he hooked up to a generator when Mali was playing football, or on the rare occasion that he was feeling generous and wanted to show Terminator, provided he could afford fuel.   Most people have radios and listen to music or the news.  They are using electricity, but it's expensive and unsustainable.  Batteries litter the ground and more than once I saw toddlers chewing on them.  I imagine this is not a unique situation in much of rural Africa.

So, if we're to avoid "westernising" these communities by bringing them electricity, and allow them to continue to live how they are, throwing aid money at them for emergency food, vaccinations or ARV drugs, then we are doing them a disservice.  Because of our overconsumption in the western world, climate change is already hitting subsistence farmers hard; those whose entire livelihoods depend on predictable rain and weather.  Our electricity consumption is directly pushing people on the edge of survival further into poverty.  We have a tendency to sit back and think of reasons, - "if they would only have less children....", or "their governments are so corrupt it's beyond help".  With a life expectancy of 49, 10% of children dying before their first birthday, and almost 20% dying before their fifth birthday, who are we to judge how many children they have?  Corruption indeed runs deep, but it's a small percentage of dishonest people, and many more are the victims.  How can they lift themselves out of poverty under such dire circumstances? 

In order for people to lift themselves out of poverty, they need education.  They need to know market prices for their crops, best farming techniques, how to prevent disease, and they need to understand what to expect from their governments so they can work for change.  Does the fact that Egypt's youth organized their uprising on Facebook somehow show that they are so "westernised" that they have lost their culture?  I think many Egyptians, on 11 February 2011 when Mubarak stepped down, were embracing and celebrating their culture.  How could this have been possible if they couldn't read, or didn't have electricity?  Education in Africa begins with improving schools, providing good teachers who have incentive to teach.  In addition to good schools, they need to be healthy.  But, how can vaccinations and medications be kept cold, and how can night surgery happen without electricity?  How can children study at night without light?  How can students become engineers and doctors without electricity?

I strongly believe that teaching someone to produce electricity using everyday items found in local markets isn't "Westernising" them or causing them to lose their culture.  On the contrary, I believe it is empowering them to take important, life-saving matters into their own hands.  Teach a man to fish and he becomes less dependent on foreign aid and government help, which may never come.  Learning to produce your own electricity generates income, encourages out of the box thinking, makes learning fun, and provides a desperately needed service.  

Why Africa?

It was unusually difficult for me to come to Africa this time.  I had just finished a crazy year at school, after many years off; I’d visited an old friend in New York, and was enjoying the (finally) nice weather.  I was just getting comfortable with American life, living in my hometown for the first time since high school.  In Mali, I was immediately accepted and eventually became profoundly comfortable in my community, and since then I’ve been looking for similar community living in Ann Arbor but with no luck.  Despite my unsuccessful efforts, I was finally generating optimism about finding a close-knit adult community here at home.  I didn't want to leave again.  Also, due to a rewarding but extremely time consuming and challenging position as a graduate student instructor this past semester, I didn't have a chance to work on or cultivate my African projects, and my interest for the continent got swept up and lost in the daily grind.  For the first time since I returned from Peace Corps over a year ago, I didn't desire the upcoming change of scenery, and found myself asking “What is it that keeps bringing me back to this continent?”  I doubted that I would find the sense of comfort in Uganda that I felt in my community in Mali or even at that very moment in Ann Arbor – so why was I returning?  Those who have spent time in Africa know the unspoken answer to that question, so it’s those that haven’t been here that ask, and I’ve never been able to give them a satisfying answer.  This time, I couldn’t even answer the question for myself; I’d somehow forgotten why I’d spend the last year of my life trying to get back to Africa.  But I was committed, and my intuition told me to stick with it, so I got on that plane and flew back to Uganda.

After that long, uncomfortable plane ride surprisingly full of eager tourists and missionaries ready to see Africa, I disembarked and was comforted by the chaos, inefficiencies and misunderstandings that made my visa check last for hours.  After waiting in the parking lot for the boot to be removed from the car (it had been “illegally” parked in the spot where the tires mysteriously appeared), Dr. Musaazi drove me back to Kampala.  This ride brought me a sense of comfort from the things that usually elicit culture shock in other people – the seemingly chaotic driving styles; shaky shop walls leaning on each other topped with rusty metal roofs; dirty, naked children shouting “how are you”; police stopping vehicles with intimidating AK47s at road blocks; blaring music from clubs; wild dogs with hunger in their eyes - the simple “disorder” of daily life.  This sense of comfort was ephemeral; in a few days, I found the disorder of this new city to be somewhat scary and alienating, confirming my pre-departure fears.  Then, on my second day of work, I decided I needed to find a more permanent home than the cheap hotel I found in the city center.  I wasn’t sure how to find a place, so I brought up my dilemma at work.  Not more than 30 minutes later, a very hard working, friendly and dedicated female co-worker said her sister may have found me a place in a hostel (an unfurnished apartment building usually for students).  Just before lunch the same day, we went to check it out.  It’s modest, an empty room and a filthy bathroom with a shower, sink, toilet, and burned out light bulb, and access to shared kitchen space on the floor below.  Needing something closer to work and more permanent, I decided to take it.  After a stop for lunch, we headed to my hotel and I was met along the way by the most amazingly energetic, happy, bubbly woman (co-worker’s sister).  Maggie helped me gather my things together from the hotel, and move them into my new apartment.  She organized delivery of a bed, loaned me a mattress, sheets, dishes, her kettle to boil water (cold, non-potable water from the faucets only), and her stove, ensuring me I didn’t need to purchase anything.  Next thing I knew, she’d gathered her cleaning supplies and was literally scrubbing my room from top to bottom.  I tried to help, but mostly was probably just in her way.  When my bed was set with the mosquito net she bought, the light bulb installed, and everything clean, we sat on the floor in my new home and chatted the night away.  I knew immediately she’d be a lifetime friend. 

It was at that moment, four days into my trip, head spinning from the days events, watching a stranger (who happens to also be a doctor) vigorously scrub my filthy floor, laughing all the while, that I remembered why it was that I came.  I still struggle to explain the way I feel when somehow, out of nowhere (in a country where it takes 5 hours to get a visa), people come together to make the impossible happen in a day, so I’ll quote John Chernoff, from his book, Hustling is Not Stealing: Stories of an African Bar Girl,

            “These are the people last in line, those without the opportunity to participate in the universal grabbing. . . Despite the chicanery at every turn, they hold strongly to a fragile fabric of social decency.  Their approach to life is characterized by every type of exploitation but also every type of altruistic kindness.  How else can one account for the survival of the common people?  No economist has every figured out how they make it from day to day.  The per diem allowanced deemed appropriate by the U.S. Department of state is several times the monthly wage of a well-employed worker and more than half the people in a city like Accra are unemployed.  It is a situation that would turn us into gunslingers, and instead, people somehow hang together and get by.  The society may be disorganized but the people are not in disorder. . . Sharing is everywhere – sharing a room, sharing one’s clothes, sharing food, sharing a cigarette, sharing a laugh, sharing a moment in the evening breeze.  Under the pressures of modern living at its worst, the inherited values of the people do not break, though they often bend.”

It is these inherited values of this culture that brings me back every time.  It’s good to be home.