Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have won one of six U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants for economically sustainable programs that protect the environment.
Launched by doctoral candidates Amy Mueller and Matt Orosz, the MIT project aims to bring cheap and eco-friendly energy to parts of the world that are now off the grid. The focus of their efforts: Lesotho, in southern Africa, where many people now get their energy from highly polluting diesel generators.
The students’ alternative comes in the form of solar energy. Not the expensive, photovoltaic-dependent kind, but the affordable and easy-to-harness concentrating solar kind. Their energy generator uses a parabolic trough to concentrate the sun’s energy to heat water to provide steam energy as well as hot water.
With a $75,000 grant from the EPA’s People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) program now in hand, Mueller and Orocz hope to install a next-generation prototype solar collector at a Lesotho clinic this fall or early next spring.
“The best way to help these communities is by helping the institutions that are there to serve them,” said Mueller. The ultimate goal, she added, is to teach local residents how to build the solar power plants on their own, thus providing a business opportunity that will create a stronger electricity infrastructure in developing countries.
While grid-tied solar is great and highly needed, off-grid projects like this do get your blood moving, don’t they?
