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University of California-Berkeley, Solar Hot Water |
 AIDG
has partnered with the University of
California - Berkeley to develop a low-cost solar hot water heater.
The goal of the project is to design a solar
hot water heater that can be built at XelaTeco, sold for $100, and that
would produce
100 L of hot water per day. Prototypes have been built in
Berkeley, California and in Xela and design refinement continues in
both locations. The team is assessing the local and cultural needs in
Guatemala and developing a business and marketing plan.
Three mechanical engineering graduate students,
Sara Beaini, Merwan Benhabib, and Kenneth Armijo, MBA Student Ernesto Rodiguez and
former students Alissa
Johnson
(Material Science and Engineering), Adam Langton (Public Policy)
Samantha Engelage (Mechanical Engineering), along with Howdy
Goudey, a staff scientist at Lawrence-Berkeley National Lab, continue
to evaluate materials for the low-cost solar hot water heater that they
designed in Spring 2007. In December 2007 the team was awarded a NCIIA
Sustainable Vision grant to continue working with AIDG. This summer
they will work with AIDG in Xela to install prototypes in 10 homes in
Xela to work towards creating a well-performing design that can
be mass-produced efficiently in Guatemala and be incorporated into
future
ventures of AIDG.
The
collaboration is between AIDG's Project Placement Program and the graduate
class in UC-Berkeley's Design for Sustainable Communities course (ER291), run by the Department
of Engineering and the Energy Resources Group.
The missions of AIDG and the Sustainability class were
both founded on the belief that successful projects in developing regions take
into account the interactions between a technology and society.
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AIDG's original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
