PV Projects

 We try here to give an idea what is involved in a DIY (Microsolar) project

Starting a Project

Many people have difficulty starting a DIY Solar (microsolar) project.
We do our best to help though it is not often easy. The most important aspect is communication.

It is NOT necessary to get big funding! If you were intending to sell a new sort of radio, for example, you might need to spend money on hiring a stall etc toexplain how it is better/different but with something unknown but useful you can start by selling it to friends and neigbours!

We are willing to do everything possible to ensure good outcomes but contacts often fail to fully communicate with us. They often seem to think they are too much bother - but it is our job to answer questions!
DIY Solar is not like other projects and it often needs a lot of 'chat' with us, and maybe others, to decide how best to go ahead.

Confusion can be much reduced if just one person is put in charge - this is important!
It is essential that one person communicates and concentrates their mind on deciding how to start things off.
It is also essential to start 'small'. Only when you have proved to yourself that this DIY Solar technique really works will it be easy to persuade others it is worth consideration!
Later you might look for funding but don't be in a hurry! It is not easy and often the demands of the funding agency are not simple to conform to! And loans often have very high interest rates.
Much better to make 'products' for local sale and use some of the proceeds to buy in more pv parts.
This is usually better than getting a loan which is often unaffordable!

What so many people ignore is the funding of a project!
Unless someone is offering finance you will need to make and sell pv devices so as to raise money to buy more pv parts from us or another supplier!

What to first solar convert? Once a project is underway other people can be brought in - but not too soon! Ideally you need to convert existing devices, like radios, by adding a small pv module. You should have used the sample sent to power a radio so this is an obvious first step.
It is best to have the pv module on a long lead so it can be put in the sun while the radio stays in the shade. You don't even need any batteries to start off!

Another easy starter is charging mobile (cell) phone batteries. People often have to be persuaded to open their phones and take out the battery - but it is the easiest and only certain way of charging all models! And so cheap!
All it then needs is a pv module connected to the battery terminal via a terminal block connector mounted on plywood. Ask for a leaflet about making them!
One other type of project is supplying schools. DIY solar not only allows pupils to make small pv lamps, etc but learn science and technology in the process!

There are lots of other things that can be done (see leaflet DIY Simplified) and we do encourage people to later at least consider importing some Chinese products - though most are unreliable.

It is also quite possible to charge car batteries - but very slowly!
Where people understand electricity we recommend them but there are limitations that many do not understand!

Someone Needs to Know
Whoever takes charge of a DIY Solar project must make sure that they first fully understand how the free sample works. Then they can consider using it in different ways or increasing the size of the battery, pv panel, number of LEDs, etc!

A Project that went wrong

Below is an account from an African NGO of their efforts to start a DIY Solar project. It is typical in many ways.
The main problem was their expectation that having been given $100 to research the project by a benefactor there would be more money coming! I had sent some extra pv parts "on loan" but they assumed it was a gift.
Many people expect that Westerners should be generous to people in developing countries but as the inventor of Grameen says,

"I deeply believe that offering charity is not the way to redress the problem of the poor. To me, that ignores their problem and lets them rot. The able-bodied poor don’t want or need charity: the dole only increases their misery; it robs them of initiative and, more importantly, of self-respect.!

We offer DIY Solar not just because it gives some power but also because offers a chance for the poor to start the sort of small enterprises that Muhammad Yunus has helped to introduce into many countries!
 

Trading

This NGO made lots of assumptions and did not ask for advice before handing out pv devices at the same price that we normally sell them to NGOs.
Imagine you want to start a small business.

Suppose you wish first to make and sell 10 pv units (LED, battery, pv module etc) that are listed as costing $10 in total per unit from DIY Solar.
With postage of say $10 (airmail) the total cost to you might be $110. (All your savings?)
 
But these are for a business so you will have to charge customers more!
You will have to spend time assembling units and need to buy food, etc and perhaps also pay rent for a stall/shop.
 
But if this is all the extra that you charge your customers how will you get more parts to assemble and sell for more customers? You cannot wait until you have recouped the money before ordering more parts that might take two weeks or more to arrive!
Maybe you will have to get a loan!

Do you know someone who imports goods - such as dry cell batteries, for example? Or plastic buckets. Or Coke.
They have a similar problem so search out such people and learn from them.
We are often told that the solar pv item is then too expensive. It may well be expensive initially but it has to be recognised that pv provides power at no more cost for a long time!

The Japanese Project - How they successfully used DIY after World War 2

Bicycles were extremely popular in Japanese cities at the end of the nineteenth century, when the import of goods that Japanese manufacturers could not compete with on price — or could not make at all
It was damaging the national economy. Clearly, if bicycles could be made in Japan, both the massive demand for an individual means of transport and the national economy would be served at the same time.
As Jane Jacobs points out in her book The Economy of Cities, Japan could have responded to this challenge by inviting foreign manufacturers to establish plants in the country — though this would have brought little profit to the Japanese themselves. Or they could have built a factory of their own — which would have required large investments in specialised machinery and the training of a skilled labour force. The Japanese :~iowed neither of these options. Instead they exploited an indigenous ~i~nt for ‘economic borrowing’ — or imitation, as non-specialists would call it. It worked like this:
Not long after the importation of bicycles had begun, large numbers of one- and two-man repair shops sprang up in the cities. Since imported spare parts were expensive and broken bicycles too valuable to cannibalise, many repair shops found it worthwhile to make replacement parts themselves — not difficult if each of the shops specialised in making only one or two specific parts, as many did.
In this way, groups of bicycle repair shops were in effect manufacturing entire bicycles before too long, and it required only an enterprising individual to begin buying parts on contract from the repairmen for Japan to have the beginnings of a home-grown bicycle manufacturing industry.
So, far from being costly to develop, bicycle manufacturing in Japan paid for itself at every stage of its development. And the Japanese got much more than a bicycle industry from the exercise. They had also acquired a model for many of their other industrial achievements:
imitation and a system of reducing complex manufacturing work to a number of relatively simple operations which could be done in small autonomous workshops. The pattern was applied to the production of many other goods, and underwrote the soaring economic success of Japan during the twentieth century. Sony began life at the end of the Second World War as a small shop making tubes on contract for radio assemblers. The first Nikon cameras were exact copies of the Zeiss Contax; Canon copied the Leica; Toyota Land cruisers were powered by copies of the Chrysler straight-six engine.

Maybe DIY Solar could be used in a similar way?