Supply Run Success and Sufferings

Over the past few weeks, the Solar Turbine Group has been occupied with running madly between Lesotho and South Africa, procuring equipment and materials with which we will set up our workshop in Bethel and build our systems.

The group split up and made several trips to Bloemfontein and Johannesburg, where we had a lot of success, but with a lot of suffering.

Our suffering came from several long drives and several days of running around various cities on what sometimes felt like a wild goose chase. It turns out that securing suppliers in unfamiliar cities can be quite difficult. Especially when you are seeking some things that don't seem to exist. Then to add insult to injury, declaring these items through the border always takes at least 2 hours. So when you pull into the border at midnight after an exhausting day, you're still not done!

But at the end of those trips, we did find success in that we managed to source a mill, a lathe, various other shop tools, steel, electronics, reflective material for the troughs, plumbing and fittings for the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC), instrumentation, and many consumables like fasteners and such. We also made many promising relationships with potentially long-term suppliers along the way.

Further suffering, however, persists as we are still challenged by finding the right components for the ORC. The right heat exchangers, expanders, and pumps are all eluding us at the moment, but after several days planted in the internet cafe and on the phone, I think we are getting close. (However, if anyone out there knows where to find such components in South Africa, I'm all ears!)

Here are a few pics from our mad dashes....

Success! Machine shop on wheels!

Convoy - all 3 trucks in this photo are heading up the mountain!

Men and their truck....

The dance up the moutain road

So, fist we, and then we....

Success! Mill down, Lathe to go...

Here we go...

And, yeah... This one definitly falls under the Suffering category

Success in Progress: on Lathe on the Mend

A day in the life with the

Solar Turbine Group at BBCDC

Sesotho word of the day: Mokhotsi (friend) or Bakhotsi (friends) oa ka (of mine)

The day starts (for me) at 6:00 with a run. Here are some things I see on the way:

Morning Farmers

Local farmers often sing as the work their fields.

A heavy load

Women from Bethel, the neighboring town Ha Teboho, and even the town on the other side of the river, Mt. Moorosi, come to collect firewood, and cary giant bundles of branches and corn husks back to their homes on their head

Morning Fires

The wood and corn husks collected by the women are used to start the household's morning fire. Sometimes I can even see a thick haze that accumulates above the towns from the smoke from these fires.

Off to School

Kids from neighboring towns must start their walk early in the morning to make it to the Bethel High School and Primary School by the time class starts at 8. Some of them walk for 2 hours one way to school. The kids are very friendly and are always curious about where we are going and where we came from.

Back to Bethel

I return to Bethel at aroun 7 to start our work day at 8.

Crunching the Numbers

Our work so far has been in the project set up and design phase. We spent much of the first month back and forth to Maseru holding meetings, public presentations, and hiring new staff. The second month we spent mostly doing design work (and dealing with our broken-down car, but that is another story). So we holed ourselves up in Bethel and reconsidered our entire system from the parabolic troughs, to the tracking system, to the ORC, to the fluids that we will use.

Our House

As part of the set up phase, we have also been working to recondition and expand an old dormatory at the school which we will live in. We had budgeted some money for accomodations. So we figured why pay rent when we can use that money to renovate a house for us to live in, and turn that money into something lasting for the students at the school. The students are all very excited about the new building that they will get next year, and sometimes help us with the construction.

Amy the Electrician (I mean electrical engineer)

And Amy wired up the whole house!!

BBCDC Students - Bakhotsi oa ka!

We have become good friends with some of the students here. This past week, BBCDC has been hosting a conference, which has been keeping the students and the staff occupied. As part of their training, the students have been cooking, cleaning, and waiting on the conference attendees. Otherwise, the students are normally in classes, and often help us with building the house as part of their carpentry class.

Kids at 5:00

At 5:00, the campus turns into a family setting. The students have returned to their homes, or to their dormitories, and the families that live on campus all relax at the end of the day, and the kids play outside.

Twilight Thunder Showers

The sunsets at about 7, and these days, is quite often accompanied by a sunset thunderstorm. We have seen many spectacular light shows up in the mountains of Lesotho!

The Solar Turbine Group then gathers for dinner at the guest house, where Matt and Amy are staying while our house is being completed. After that, the campus is quite dark. The rest of the group then heads back to their room, and after some reading or whatever, it is lights out.

As you can see, we have been leading a bit of a reclusive life here in Bethel as we have been setting up the project and modeling and designing our systems. But we have now almost completed our first phase of the project which has also included the hiring of our Basotho staff, the re-design of our technology for the first prototype, the acquisition of new equipment for the BBCDC workshop, and the purchase of materials for our first pilot system.

We are on our final materials run, and we will begin construction of our first system with our full staff next week, and we are looking forward to getting our hands dirty.

Bethel and BBCDC

Home Base for the Solar Turbine Group

The Solar Turbine Group is based at the Bethel Business and Community Development Center (BBCDC) in Bethel, Lesotho, a small town South East of the capital, Maseru, deep in the rural mountains.



To get to Bethel from Maseru (one of the main entry points to Lesotho, and also the location of the World Bank office and one of our partners ATS), we travel along paved roads for about 2 ½ hours to a town called Mohale’s Hoek. From Mohale’s Hoek, the paved road continues South East along the Sanqu River. Bethel, however, is on the other side of the river. Therefore, we must cross the river just past Mohale’s Hoek, and continue on the West side of the river on dirt and rock roads to Bethel. The journey on the dirt roads is another bone-jarring 2 ½-hour drive (with absolutely breath-taking views of the mountains of Lesotho, by the way). Alternatively, if we are taking minitaxis from Maseru, we continue along the paved road from Mohale’s Hoek to a town called Mt. Moorosi, which is just across the Sanqu River from Bethel. We then procede by tin boat across the Sanqu.

Sanqu River (from the Bethel Side)

River Crossing at Mount Moorosi

From the River, we hike up and over a town called Ha Teboho, to finally reach Bethel.

Bethel from Ha Teboho

This is a view of Bethel from Ha Teboho. The gray building way off in the distance is the mission at Bethel. BBCDC is in the trees just to the left of the mission, while the town of Bethel is just to the right of the mission.

BBCDC is a post-high school school, where Basotho students learn all sorts of vocational / life skills with a sustainability focus, and the campus itself is a working model of its teachings. The topics taught include:

Solar Energy Technology in Buildings

Pictured above: A small house in BBCDC with
a small PV panel and a solar water heater



Sustainable agriculture (“permaculture”)
and water and irrigation topics

Carpentry

Pictured Above: Ivan Yaholnitsky, a teacher at BBCDC

Other topics tought include: Business, metal working, hospitality, and some others.

BBCDC not only teaches about sustainable practices, but it is a working model, a living workshop of these sustainable practices. This environment, the experience and insight of the founder and teacher at the school, Ivan, and the interaction with the students, staff and their families makes BBCDC a very inspirational place to collaborate and work on solar energy technology for rural areas. We are very lucky to have found such a place!