When he was 14, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill using spare parts and plans he found in a library book.
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When he was 14, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill using spare parts and plans he found in a library book.
Tim Van Damme
on 01 Aug 07So, explain me again why we use all kinds of environment-polluting technologies to get electricity? This one is a real inspiration.
From William’s point of view: this is a breakthrough for his village I guess. More possibilities to grow crops, more food, selling food, ...
Splashman
on 01 Aug 07Tim, this is an inspiring story, certainly. Your question, rhetorical or not, is a bit naive, however. Unless you’re willing to do without electricity when the wind isn’t blowing (or sun isn’t shining, etc.), or unless you’re willing to pay a lot more for a huge power storage system (which has its own environmental cost), these sorts of renewable sources are currently useful only as a supplement to other sources. And for other reasons, there are some who support windmills as long as they they’re in somebody else’s backyard.
I don’t mean to rain on your parade. Just want to ground the discussion in reality.
Richard Banfield
on 02 Aug 07I think the point is that it’s a rather simple solution in a location that has a simple problem – no power. Having spent more than 30 years living in Africa (including Malawi) this is a really ingenious solution for someone with no formal education and living in an economy that does very little to support innovation or entrepreneurship. Nice work William!
Dillon Thomas
on 02 Aug 07Splashman, if everyone had your ignorant sit on the fence attitude we all might as well give up the fight against global warming. It’s obvious you haven’t being keeping an eye on renewable energy technologies which are solving all of the issues you brought up.
William Cox
on 02 Aug 07Dillon, I’m not sure why you have to be so hostile about it, but Splashman makes very good points.
“renewable energy technologies” aren’t going to make windmills turn when there’s no wind, nor are they going to make solar cells produce a current when there’s no sun – that’s a given.
Finding new and more efficient sources of power is a great thing, but just because they’re new, doesn’t make them efficient.
That said, good job William! I makes me get choked up to see someone make something out of their humble circumstances, and not even grip or complain about it.
street
on 02 Aug 07Those things are an eyesore.. and just try running a hairdryer with one!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/11/business/wind.php
Tom Riely
on 02 Aug 07What’s not as clear is there is a large battery storage system as part of the windmill that stores power for the times when the wind isn’t blowing. He is adding solar to the installation and the system will store electricity during the day for use at night, too.
James
on 02 Aug 07@street – Sure they can be ugly, but are they as ugly as a ravaged planet that’s lifeless because we’ve destroyed our planet?
Just ask yourself – “Are hairdryers absolutely essential? World the world as we know it come to a halt if there were no hairdryers?” That’s the sort of question we have to ask ourselves if we want to make a dent in our environmental problems. Take the 37signals route – less is more. What’s the point in having beautifully coiffured hair if there’s no one left to see it?!
Tim Van Damme
on 02 Aug 07@Splashman: I’m sorry, should have taken a couple of seconds before replying :-)
Idd, it was a bit naive from me. But I’m so fed up with things we overproduce/could produce cleaner without a large effort/... that I just when on a rant. My bad…
Morgan Aldridge
on 02 Aug 07I have a number of friends that live off-the-grid in Vermont and do very well by it. Sure, the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow, but lead-acid batteries are inexpensive (and, recyclable) and you can easily turn the excess back into power for the grid.
I’ve house sat for one of the families for a couple summers and it means a bit simpler living, but not much. No TV, but plenty of radio, light, and power to charge my laptop. No hot water, but that was really their personal choice, solar hot water is not hard.
All my congratulations and best wishes to William. He’s discovered that this stuff is not difficult, it just takes a motivated person and a little ingenuity, and it makes a big difference. I wish I were more motivated in this area.
To those that say this isn’t the most efficient way to generate electricity, it really doesn’t matter when it’s passive energy source as you’re not creating a negative impact (at least immeasurably). And when it means light & information, such as in William’s case, that makes a world of difference.
Daniel Haran
on 02 Aug 07@those of you talking about efficiency: care to accomplish more with fewer materials?
ryan
on 02 Aug 07FYI, Our company just spent $80M on a set of boilers used to produce electricity and over $48M of that pricetag was for pollution control of the boilers. What comes out of the smokestack is harmless atmospheric gas and during the products various bypoducts (such as gypsum) are produced that are resold to be used in other products. To say that there are more environmentally pleasing alternatives to windmills is true but in comparasion, rough cost/land acreage estmates put needing several thousand acres of windmills and roughly 8 times the cost. There are tradeoffs, but the “Evil” that everyone speaks of is not true 100% of the time and generally only for older technology that will be replaced soon.
Paul Graham
on 02 Aug 07This home-made windmill is not pollution free. There is a lot of pollution generated in making the parts and getting them to the guy’s house. If everyone generated their own electricity by making windmills in their back yards, it might well cause net more pollution than power plants.
Tarek
on 02 Aug 07@ryan: “What comes out of the smokestack is harmless atmospheric gas”
Like maybe… carbon dioxide? The gypsum is pulling sulfer dioxide out of your emissions, and while that’s a good thing, as long as you’re burning a fossil fuel, you’re gonna be releasing carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas. (Unless you are sequestering the carbon dioxide, which I highly doubt.)
Morgan Aldridge
on 02 Aug 07Paul Graham:
Correct, except that almost all of the pieces used to build it we scavenged parts. One can safely assume that somebody used that bicycle for a long while before it was used, same with most of the other products. Even his lead-acid battery looks quite used and was provably just rejuvenated.
In addition to reducing the impact of the original pollution released in the making of all the bits and pieces and preventing it all from being further pollution laying around on the ground, his wind turbine will continue to generate electricity as long as it’s standing. A few drops of oil, some water for the battery, a new rope for the pulley, and the occasional new wooden pole is actually within reason for all it might need to keep generating that electricity for 100 years.
Yes, the $80M boilers that ryan’s company just installed is releasing no waste pollution into the environment from its electricity generation process, but the development, manufacturing, installation, and operation of it does. The fuel it uses to generate electricity is not pollution free from source to tank: how is it gathered, refined, and shipped?
This is not pollution free or sustainable, while Williams solution introduced very little pollution in addition to the original manufacturing of the items for their intended use. Also, because William’s windmill can potentially operate for so long, the net pollution per amount of electricity produced will only get smaller.
There’s a very specific reason that the mantra is “reduce, reuse, recycle”.
Bo
on 02 Aug 07I could be wrong but isn’t the point more that he created his own source of electricity where no power alternatives exist, not so much the environmental impact of his choices.
Adam
on 02 Aug 07Well said, Bo. If William’s home had been adjacent to a coal mine, I suspect he would have checked out a book on fossil fuel energy at his library.
JF
on 02 Aug 07Something I’ve always wondered, and don’t know the answer to, is if decentralized individual powerplants would end up polluting more just as more 50 individual cars pollute more when compared to 50 people riding on the single bus. Is the bus centralized power and the car decentralized power?
Morgan Aldridge
on 02 Aug 07@Bo, yes, definitely the major point. I think the sustainability of it (regardless of its efficiency or environmental impact) is a big part of the point as well.
@Adam, one would hope that he wouldn’t have. I’d assume he wouldn’t have as fossil fuel requires continuous collecting and/or purchasing of fuel, regardless of the proximity to it. Passive energy collection is immensely more sustainable.
@JF, I guess it depends on the method of generating the power.
One would think that 50 smaller hydro plants would release less methane than one giant one feeding off one huge lake as there wouldn’t be as much concentrated methane produced in the environment, but I really don’t know how exactly that would work. Plus there’s the whole electricity loss over distance factor.
Wind power, of course, pretty much requires decentralization and then you would hopefully have less electricity losses due to distance.
Of course, with coal, gas, etc., would the amount of pollution required to send a large amount of fuel to a centralized location and deal with the electricity losses out to the farthest points or send smaller amounts of fuel nearer and farther, but lose less electricity along the way? But I guess that’s your real question anyway.
Noah
on 02 Aug 07I built my first generator when I was 11, made 4w shouldn’t I be on a stage somewhere? Oh so because he was from Africa and did it with scrap and it improved people’s lives he should be there? It might be a nice story but how many wind mills could be built for the cost of the plane ticket, or how many people trained to make them? How many hundreds of person/years of basic schooling could children recive for the cost of a plane ticket. Look it up US/Africa flights aren’t cheap.
Christopher K
on 02 Aug 07@Noah: the plain ticket was an investement for William to let him start thinking big. That’s huge.
That William guy will return to his village he sure will make a difference.
@JF: consider the land lines needed.
Christopher K
on 02 Aug 07eye-opener regarding development in africa http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/bono.html
Ron Phillips
on 04 Aug 07Noah:
“Oh so because he was from Africa and did it with scrap and it improved people’s lives he should be there? “
Yes, that’s exactly why.
Ron
Anonymous Coward
on 06 Aug 07@Noah: Congratulations, you’ve just made a total douchebag of yourself on 100,000 RSS readers across the world. And look . . . you didn’t have to buy a plane ticket to do it!
ike
on 07 Aug 07This is in response to the initial comments…this is a very inspiration story…but, why? why is it inspirational? two reasons, i believe:
firstly, it shows the ability of getting something from absolutely nothing! secondly, the iniative and “resourcefulness” of this individual is overwhelming, especially from such a young age.
This sort of behaviour should be encouraged in our easten countries…the spark of entreprenauralship and the driving force of new economies!
This discussion is closed.