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.