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The Kachione Blantyre Workshop
The Kachione Blantyre workshop is the center of operations, where small 5W light systems and robust Forever Batteries are assembled and where hundreds of solar products are stored in shipping containers before being shipped out to the village shops. It also has two small offices for planning operations.
And yes, the workshop has chickens and goats. Very noisy roosters and bleating goats.
Gilbert, Gift, James and Eggrey working on the Forever Batteries. The scissors are for cutting the Batire Lokhalitsa specifications label for each battery.
Gilbert and Robert discussing Forever Battery production.
A weekly village shops distribution trip planning session - Christina and Rachel lease a truck almost every week to deliver the products. Christina and Rachel are studying their phones - they get scores of calls and texts from the shops requesting hundreds of products each week. Robert and Laura are working on a spreadsheet, receipts and customer data system to make this easier - Hope Chisale, the new Operations Manager, now works with Rachel and Christina each week on this daunting planning task.
James and Gift installing quick disconnectors on the solar pumps; they'll also add a users' sheet to the pump's box which shows how to hang the pumps from a tripod to keep them vertical and up off the muddy bottom: "ndodo zitatu"
Chitani Chatama practicing at the workshop how to demonstrate the "ndodo zitatu" method of keeping the pumps upright and up off the muddy pond or stream bottom. Other critical aspects that he'll emphasize: always hang the pump from its handle, not from its electric cord, and never run the pump in the dry air by using the quick disconnector to turn the pump on and off. This week in June Chitani and Thomson's were in training at the workshop. In the next two months during their travels to the villages to conduct solar pump interviews, they will demonstrate the "ndodo zitatu" method many times. The purpose is to increase the longevity of the pumps.
Christina and Rachel showing Thomson how the Forever Battery is installed, and how it works. While Thomson and Chitani will focus on interviewing solar pump users, it's important for them to understand all the solar products sold by the village shops.
Lunch, cooked in the solar cookers by Judith, is served to the workers every day. Here Thomson and Victoria are having a lunchtime conversation with Chitani, to the left outside the photo.
It's not all serious work, and this group knows how to put on a feast and dance - in this case, the celebration is Robert's 62nd birthday, as well as intern Emily's going away party. James , in the black and white striped shirt, was a master DJ, spinning the dance tunes from his phone. CEO Laurence Kachione sports the red hat and Distribution Manager Rachel sports the grey cap.
The next photos are from August 2023....
Eggrey (left) and Gift building the first protoypes of the Forever Batteries.
James (right) and Gift working on a later phase of building the same batteries.
Robert devising a method to encase the battery cells and control board in a block of protective clear epoxy.
Skyler Selvin, PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, invented the Forever Battery. The green control board protects the lithium titanate (LTO) cells (the grey pouches) from being under or overcharged, ensuring a battery life of 20,000 charge/discharge cycles. That's four to ten times longer than lithium iron phosphate batteries and twenty times longer than lithium ion batteries!
Robert and Skyler believe this battery will not only make the cookers more effective by storing solar energy between cooking sessions, it will also provide a power source for a wide array of 12v electrical appliances, bringing off-grid electricity to the villages and obviating the need for toxic lead-acid batteries.
The battery's control board also has a data port for an SD card, providing critical information to further refine the design, and eventually to provide incontrovertible evidence of the life history of the battery. This not only provides effective use data to donors, it also has the potention for village customers to earn poverty-reduction and carbon-reduction credits.
Building last year's version of the LED light bulbs, encased in plaster. This year's version uses more durable plastic backing instead of plaster.
Victoria, Laurence and Gilbert conferring in the office.
James and Gift have plugged their drill into the big LTO battery of the solar cargo trike, which does double duty as a portable power source for electric tools.
Heading home in the solar cargo trike after a long day's work....