National Plan for Kenya to use up to 25% Windpower by 2012

A Kenyan firm plans to produce 300 MW of electricity by 2012 by harnessing
renewable wind power in the north of the country, its director told Reuters.
Turkana Wind Power has been studying the viability of wind power projects in the barren, inhospitable region for the last four years, Chris Staubo said.
"Full production will be in June 2012 but we should start production in June 2011," he told Reuters late on Thursday. Once completed, the project could meet about a quarter of Kenya's total energy demand, which stands at some 1,200 MW, just slightly below the installed capacity.

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Kenya firm plans 300 MW wind farm by 2012

Solar Hot Air Balloon generator from Australia

"The envelope of a balloon is tethered via a windlass to a motor/generator, Fig 4. The balloon is charged with hot air obtained by drawing ambient air through a glazed solar collector that encloses black pipes filled with water. When fully charged the balloon is allowed to ascend with the buoyancy force doing work on the generator. At some predetermined height a large fraction, typically 80%, of the remaining air is vented, the buoyancy is reduced and the balloon is hauled back to ground level by the operating the motor/generator as a motor. The system delivers, via the motor/generator, an electrical power output to a storage battery or to the electrical grid."

Read more:
http://www.solartran.com.au/balloon_engine.htm

LED Solar Device Turns Bottles Into Lamps

The Solarbulb is a device that utilizes the power of the Sun, Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and old plastic bottles to provide up to 6 hours of continuous light. The solar bulb uses 0.18 W solar cells and attaches to ordinary bottles, which can be safely filled with water to amplify the light, and provide a stabilizing weight in windy locations. The devices are not yet for sale, but are expected to cost $20-$25 USD each and will be marketed as replacements to garden lights in the developed world, however, the concept is certainly worth investigating on a smaller, more affordable scale for use in developing regions  

Please visit the links below for more information

CES 2009: MiniWIZ’s Solarbulb Turns Bottles Into Lamps

http://www.miniwiz.com/

Harnessing biogas in Rural China

One of the featured projects from the Ashden Awards.

The Shaanxi Mothers' Environmental Protection Volunteer Association (Shaanxi Mothers) is led by its founder Mrs Wang Mingying. It has installed 1,294 biogas plants in rural farming households in the Shaanxi Province of China since 1999. The plants produce biogas from pig and human waste.

Xu Wenjian, Party Secretary, Miao Zuigou Village, Zou Yuan town, near Yan'an, with his biogas light and stove.

Click the following links for more details

Official Site (Ashden Awards)

http://www.ashdenawards.org/winners/shaanxi

Video (Ashden Awards)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMreH1YUs90&NR=1

Building Houses with Loofahs in Paraguay

Award winner Elsa Zaldivar and colaborator look over the new building material

Taken from The Rolex Awards for Enterprise:

In the poverty-stricken countryside of Paraguay, a landlocked country in the heart of South America, an innovative social activist has found a new use for an old vegetable. Elsa Zaldívar, whose longstanding commitment to helping the poor while protecting the environment has won her deep respect in her native land, has found a way to mix loofah – a cucumber-like vegetable that is dried to yield a scratchy sponge for use as abrasive skin scrubber – with other vegetable matter like husks from corn and caranday palm trees, along with recycled plastic, to form strong, lightweight panels. These can be used to create furniture and construct houses, insulating them from temperature and noise. About 300,000 Paraguayan families do not have adequate housing.

Follow the link to Read more!

Link to full story and Video (English)

Loofahs drying

Prototype structures