Cool engineering solution for minimal electricity generation..

[flacaltenn]

Heard this on the news today. It's not a long term fix. But it's an elegant stop gap way to get critical lighting and electricity for unconnected villages. AND -- it's getting funding from Shell Oil..

Gravity-powered lamp for people with no electricity - E & T Magazine

A device that uses gravity to generate energy off the grid could benefit people around the world with no access to electricity after its developer received £150,000 to scale up.
London start-up Deciwatt invented GravityLight, which can take only three seconds to lift the weight that powers it to create 25 minutes of light on its descent. “It has no batteries to run out, replace or dispose of,” said Jim Reeves, technical director of Deciwatt.

A panel of judges from academia, the engineering sector and business awarded GravityLight £150,000 on Tuesday to expand, as part of the Shell Springboard programme.

The gravity-powered lamp is an answer for the estimated 1.5 billion people with no access to electricity worldwide and it could replace the biomass fuels – mainly kerosene lamps – which so many families in the developing world rely on for light.

 

[flacaltenn]

Wanna cure obesity in America?? Mandate one of these for every large screen TV sold. With a HEAVIER weight and no way to lift it from the couch or the recliner..

Make it exactly generate the power required for one 1/2 hour show..

 

[Programmer]

The third world sucks. This shit's for camping when you think about it... For the shed.

 

[Old Rocks]

Wanna cure obesity in America?? Mandate one of these for every large screen TV sold. With a HEAVIER weight and no way to lift it from the couch or the recliner..

Make it exactly generate the power required for one 1/2 hour show..

LOL. Or for a computer.

 

[Old Rocks]

The third world sucks. This shit's for camping when you think about it... For the shed.

Look, dumb fuck, we all started out like that. It takes steps to get to where the industrial nations are today. In fact, a light at night, for study time, is one of those steps. Technology like this is important for nations to raise their standards of living.

 

[Programmer]

The third world sucks. This shit's for camping when you think about it... For the shed.

Look, dumb fuck, we all started out like that. It takes steps to get to where the industrial nations are today. In fact, a light at night, for study time, is one of those steps. Technology like this is important for nations to raise their standards of living.

We were never fooled into advancement via multinational charity like the recipients of this lamp bullshit. This could just as well been some wind-up device, but the purpose is to light up charitable trust accounts with something 'new' for poor little girl's 'study time', not light the study time itself.

 

[flacaltenn]

There are some whose intention is to keep the 3rd world from developing and consuming. I'm not one of them.
But stuff like this has huge benefits for health and welfare. And they ARE in a sense -- camping. Except they are always on the verge of existing and that is where their home is..

 

[Steven_R]

If we can get fusion energy to be viable AND cheap water purification/desalination plants the sky's the limit as far as pulling the remotest ares into the 21st century.

Of course, then we better find a way to limit population or we'll find out if Malthus is right.