Lâl and President Gorbachev at the Energy Globe 2007 Awards in May 2008.

President Gorbachev reading about blueEnergy at the Energy Globe Awards.

Lâl and associate Matthieu Poulet accept the Energy Globe Award on behalf of blueEnergy from Mrs. Maneka Gandhi (Former Minister of the Environment, India).

Lâl and Mr. Pöttering (President of European Parliament) at the Energy Globe Awards in the European Parliament building in Brussels.

Lâl Marandin, Colette Grinevald (of linguistic fame) and President Jacques Chirac of France discussing blueEnergy.

Lâl discussing blueEnergy with Mr. Samassekou (Former Minister of Education of Mali).

Lâl discussing blueEnergy with President Chissano of Mozambique.

During my trip the price of petroleum surpassed $5 a gallon and nearly everyone in the transport sector took to the streets to demand government price controls. With a transport strike in place, we were nearly paralyzed in Bluefields. blueEnergy doesn't own its own vehicles, rather it relies on its partner, the National Technical Institute (INATEC), for transportation services. blueEnergy typically has access to the Institute's Land Rover but as happens on a regular basis, the vehicle was in the capital city for repairs since no one is able to service the specialty vehicle in Bluefields. This, combined with the extreme pressure on the remaining vehicle due to the strike (as well as the death of the chauffeur's father), left us high and dry at a time we had over 40 people to move around, materials to purchase, community trips to make (think, getting materials from shop/house/office to docks and back), etc.

Amidst this logistical confusion and difficultly, the real bad news came in - Neuman Puchie, leader of the community of Set Net, blueEnergy champion and person friend to us all, died unexpectedly while on a trip to the capital city of Managua. Just one week before, Puchie had captained a boat full of blueEnergy staff to the Pearly Keys to celebrate the successful water purification workshop. Puchie was the reason blueEnergy ever came to know the community of Set Net. He was often the captain that brought us there, the first to help unload the boat, the one to house the blueEnergy teams, and the first up in the morning making everyone coffee. He had a hand in every step of the blueEnergy project in Set Net and was the community champion.

The entire blueEnergy team was in shock at the news of his passing. Most painful was the uncertainty over the cause of death and the prospect that it may not have been natural causes. Nicaragua is a land where facts and information are far and few between, and the pain this causes in times of crisis can be immense, especially to the family. I was so upset I just went to bed early, something I rarely do. What is certain is that Puchie will be sorely missed and the community of Set Net now has a mountain to climb to get back on its feet.

To add insult to injury, on my last day in the capital, the car I was in was pelted with water balloons by transport strikers as we sped along the highway near the airport. As I was talking to our driver, I caught one right in the face. I was lucky all I got was a sharp scare and a soar jaw... others had been attacked with rocks and oil. When you're helping people, you always hope they'll be appreciative, but the world is complex and there's often a monkey wrench that enters the equation. Often times its nothing personal.

blueEnergy's strength is its persistence through the good and bad times and this trip was surely a testament to that.

The life-cycle cost of energy systems is far more sensitive to quality of implementation then the specific technology you use, within reason of course.  So much implementation in the world is so incredibly poorly done, that you can rise above the crowd and be competitive just by doing what you do well, whatever it is you do.

Many people focus on the technology implemented to calculate cost.  They show you a table that says coal energy costs $X/kWh, hydro energy costs $Y/kWh, wind energy costs $Z/kWh... but what they don't show you is the 10 pages of assumptions that go into the calculation.

A professor of mine at Berkeley once told me of cost models - "remember Mathias, crap in, crap out".  It's important to create cost models, but it's also important to remember that they are just models, not crystal balls.  They are tools used to create policy, rather than a reflection of necessary truth.

Within those 10 pages of unread assumptions lies the key one - that the project is conceived of and executed well.  You take that assumption out and the whole house of cards come crumbling down.  Everyone has to play the "cost game" and brag that their solution is the cheapest option, but remember to take it all with a grain of salt as these cost models are a rather precarious breed.

One of my jobs is to set the guidelines and tone for how much we bog people down with documenting and reporting verses letting them immerse themselves fully in the experience of the moment.  Left to their own vices people gravitate towards the latter.  But from an organizational perspective, that is like letting 100% of the wind flow through your wind turbine without extracting any of its energy, which of course doesn't make any sense.  The organization needs to do work and it needs to tap into the wind to drive its generator.

If the wind is individuals' experience and knowledge, then we must develop a documenting and reporting system to extract as much as we can - but we must also accept that, like with Betz's limit, we can't capture all of it.

If we try to capture too much we stifle individuals' abilities to experience their experiences and even make them forgo some experiences all together.  So even if their reporting improves, the content they're reporting on becomes less rich.  I realize now that as a "data guy", I was living with the assumption that we should be collecting as much data as possible.  Now I can see that the upper limit of the value of information - itself a function of both quality and quantity - that can be captured by a a reporting system is much less than 100%.  The key is extracting just the right amount such that the blades and generator spin but the wind moves through unimpeded.

blueEnergy is just now breaking the surface and as we do, more and more people are finding us to tell us what we should be doing.  Sometimes they're right but most of the time they're either telling us we should have done something more or should be doing something more now.  There's no doubt we need good advice and help, especially going forward.  But we also know where we've come from and what it took to get to where we are now. 

We see below the water's surface for our particular situation.  People who are now seeing blueEnergy for the first time and think we could have or should be doing more don't understand what it takes to get anything done in the environment we work in.  It takes a significant physical, human and organization infrastructure to lift a noticeable chunk of iceberg out of the water.  And by significant infrastructure I don't mean bloated overhead - I just mean a highly effective body of knowledge, experience, motivation, procedures, facilities and equipment.  And in the environment blueEnergy has chosen to work in, it's a struggle for everything including every inch of infrastructure.

I know in my heart that we have done and are doing all we can with the resources we have.  We will continue to improve our efficiency and as we attract more resources and get them to gel with our existing ones we will be able to do more.  One thing's for certain, this whole blueEnergy experience has sensitized me to the challenges faced by other organizations just breaking the surface.  I look at them now with a sense of awe and admiration and am very careful with my words when offering suggestions.

Innovation is a wonderful thing.  There are always ways to improve the way we build and do things, there's no debate about that.  But does the world really need a new type of water filter or does it need people to execute the myriad of good solutions already out there?  After all, people need clean water, they don't need innovative water purification technology.  Similarly they need energy service to light up their homes and store their medicines, they don't need a flashy new wind turbine design.

Certainly the technology and models used have to be workable... but the chasm between workable and working is large - and people gettin' 'er done is what lies in between.

There are so many workable solutions out there just waiting for motivated, dedicated people with the follow-through to actually execute them.  Having great ideas to help people is one thing but actually going out and dealing with the daily grind, the disappointments and the failures and somehow driving dreams into reality, a reality that actually helps people - that's hard.  blueEnergy's director in NIcaragua (also my brother), Guillaume Craig, is a master doer.  I'm constantly amazed at his ability to turn ideas into reality and the last 3 weeks has been no exception.  Everyone within blueEnergy, myself included, and many outside of blueEnergy have a lot to learn from him.

Am I the first person to reflect on the chasm between ideas and action - of course not - so I'm going to stop and get back to work.  After all, gettin' 'er done is blueEnergy's true innovation :)

This past week was incredible.  I haven't had so much fun on the job in a while.  I started blueEnergy because I wanted to build wind turbines, but of course my responsibilities require me to be behind a desk most of the time.  I'm not complaining at all - I still love what I get to do - but this week was special for me as I got to be in the shop each and every day.

Here's a group shot of the team that got 'er done!

 
Throughout the week we focused on a modification of our existing design along with two new designs.  Our main goal was to create and study several options for a more robust small wind turbine, then make some decisions on which design to hone in on moving forward.  We succeeded in building all three models we had aimed to and ran a considerable number of tests.  We're still busy compiling the results and will be making some final decisions in the next couple weeks on which model we adopt for our next round of production.

We were honored to have the Otherpower.com crew with us on the ground in Nicaragua and to have the remote advising of Hugh Piggott.  For Otherpower.com I think this trip was truly eye-opening and their practical knowledge represented a treasure trove for our local employees and volunteers.  We're out to make Bluefields the capital of small-scale wind power in Central America and the events of this past week certainly strengthened our case.

There's a lot of talk globally about the need to design for low cost for poor beneficiaries. The logic is simple - poor people don't have a lot of money so you need to design low cost products for them to meet their needs on their budget. Without access to capital it's true that poor people can't afford things with a high price tag. Without access to capital they buy the cheapest goods on the market. What many people seem to not understand though, is that these people pay a high cost using the most logical metric of $ per unit service delivered because cheap products are made from cheap parts and fail early. Assuming one can develop innovative financing mechanisms (my friend Matt over at Kiva.org is working on that), then the poor are no longer constrained to pay the high cost of low price.

A lot of people out there are trying to design a cheap wind turbine to meet the needs of the rural poor. Their number one priority is a low purchase price, which means a small machine, a small tower, and cheap parts. To my mind this doesn't make any sense in the remote, developing world context. When transportation is difficult, the environment is harsh (heat, humidity, and salinity), capacity levels are low, most of your system life-cycle cost is not in the energy system itself, but rather in the pre-installation, operation and servicing of the system over it's useful life. Going through all that trouble to put in a tiny machine that requires the same number of trips, same amount of training, and same amount of community relations, but puts out a lot less energy, seems wasteful to me. And shortchanging on quality materials to achieve a low price tag only comes back to haunt you when the harsh environment takes its toll.

In order to guide our thinking for this week of design, I've had to clarify that our #1 core technical priority is durability. It's the old "Penny wise pound foolish" adage - that to save a dollar in construction but incur a $500 penalty in maintenance is foolish. Investing  a little more money up front to create a durable turbine with good energy output means more total energy service delivery, and therefore a low life-cycle cost. Of course there are limits - I'm not saying "spare no expense" - it's just that there are so many improvements that can be had for small amounts of money that it doesn't make sense to pass them up for fear of not being the cheapest turbine on the market.

For the record, priority #2 is some energy production in low wind speeds and priority #3 is ease of manufacture, assembly, and operation.

If you want to read about the Otherpower team's experience with blueEnergy, from there perspective, check these out:

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/2/22/23528/6318

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/2/25/195437/758

Show me a wind turbine manufacturer that claims they aren't continuously rethinking their design to increase reliability, power output, and decrease cost I'll show you a liar.  The wind is a harsh mistress and wind turbines are moving, dynamic systems exposed to the elements.

As DanB said last night, "everything always fails, it's just a question of when", he is alluding to a very important point.  All dynamic machines fail - this is a given.  Sustainability is not achieved by building a machine that never fails, sustainability is achieved by building a machine that is durable as well as an infrastructure that can deal with the inevitable failures when they arise.  Working on these two key elements simultaneously is the strength of blueEnergy's approach.

In order to resolve our design issue, we have reached out to some of the giants in our world (see earlier posting "In the Land of Giants").  We are hosting our first "design conference" in Bluefields this coming week and are honored to have the participation of Hugh Piggott, original designer (participating remotely) and the Otherpower.com crew - DanB, DanF, George and Rich - here with us on the ground for the next 9 days.  We are also fortunate to have another dozen or so experts participating on the ground and remotely, as well as our powerhouse volunteers and local staff.

The goal of the conference is to beef up the design of our turbine to make it more robust.  We've got the facilities and the right people for the job.  Now it's go time.  I'll be posting here with regular updates on the people, the experience and the design progress.

Every organization needs this type of knowledge sharing and retention to a greater or lesser extent, but if you rely on volunteers to make your organization go, it is absolutely critical.  They come in idealistic and motivated, with fire in their belly.  But they are often young and haven’t had much experience leading and documenting projects.  Often times they don’t work full-time and want to focus only on program activities.  But unless your organization’s stated mission is solely to educate and give experiences to volunteers, then your interest in the volunteers is to get them to contribute to the organization, either in the program, administration or fundraising arenas.  But volunteers consume an organization’s resources, both in terms money and time.  Selecting, hosting, training and coordinating volunteers are huge tasks, if done well.  The costs associated with the volunteer program represent resources that could have been invested directly in program activities, so in order to be justifiable, the organization needs to figure out a way to get more value from the participation of volunteers then it invests in them.  It’s a simple equation to understand but “making it so” isn’t so obvious.

From an organization’s perspective, people come and go and by default take their knowledge and experiences with them.  Unless there is culture of sharing and a place to upload this information in a format that is comprehensible to the person’s successor, the organization loses what it spent tremendous resources producing.  Getting people to share is an uphill battle, not because they don’t want to do it, but because of the time and effort it takes to do it well.  But in the end, the one sure thing is that putting in the time and effort up front saves the organization tons of time down the line.

My advice, for what it’s worth – start building that sharing culture early on and give your people the right tools to make it happen.  Online collaboration tools like Salesforce and NetSuite are a good place to start.

Solar panels don’t have any moving parts and can be discretely mounted on rooftops where they can barely be seen.  Because of this, when a solar panel isn’t working, nobody except the end-users can tell.  Small-scale hydro turbines are placed in rivers and aren’t generally visible, so again, when they aren’t working, nobody but the end-users can tell. 

Wind turbines, however, need to be installed in exposed sites like hilltops and water-front areas where wind can flow unobstructed and even be enhanced by the terrain.  Wind turbines are therefore necessarily highly visible.  In essence, they are billboards that advertise their performance to all those around.  When they are working, they enhance the positive image of renewable energy but when they aren’t they incite all critics within sight to clamor that renewable energy doesn’t work.  With wind power, it’s not just the end-users that know whether the system is working – everyone in the community knows.  Wind turbines can either self-promote or ruin your reputation in a hurry.

Some people love the sight of wind turbines, some hate it.  Studies have shown that people’s opinions are heavily influenced by the perceived utility of the turbines.  In other words, when the turbines are spinning and people are made to understand that their motion is lighting up the lights in their house, they find them aesthetically pleasing.  When the turbines aren’t spinning and it’s clear that no benefit is being delivered, people tend to see them as eyesores and nuisances.  Community perception is a powerful force and can make or break development projects, both in the developed and developing worlds.

In California in the 1980’s, some companies installed motors to spin their wind turbines like a fan when there was no wind in order to increase their perceived utility.  While this was over the top as well as a bit dishonest, it clearly shows that they understood the strong relationship between perceived utility and community acceptance.

When wind turbines aren’t spinning, it’s generally for one of two reasons: either there isn’t enough wind or there’s a technical problem.  Beyond choosing a good installation site, we can’t control the first predicament so we have a vested interest in focusing a lot of our attention on the robustness of the wind turbines to avoid the second predicament.  Our reputation depends on it.

Lâl Marandin, blueEnergy Co-founder and Associate Director at the time, arrived in Bluefields Nicaragua to lead the charge with a couple thousand dollars we had raised from close family and friends.  We had no shop, no house, no office, no tools, and no partnerships.  Lâl and I had made an exploratory trip in the summer of 2003 so we had an idea of what to expect, but the challenges in front of us were enormous to put it mildly.

Energy systems are hardware systems made out of steel, copper, and wood, and building them takes a workforce, facilities and equipment.  It’s the opposite of the software startup, which does take talent, but can often be pulled off with a couple programmers, their computers, a living-room office and an ample supply of pizza.  There’s no way around the capital requirements of hardware projects and the relatively complicated organizational structure that is needed to make it work, even for a modest-sized project like blueEnergy.  Needless to say, hardware projects like this generally aren’t taken on by small budget organizations, and certainly not of the nonprofit variety.

In order to survive in the early stages and leverage the limited resources we had, we formed a strategic partnership with the Bluefields campus of the National Technical Institute (IPCC-INATEC).  This partnership provided us a modest facility, access to heavy tools, transportation services and the support of local technicians.  From there, Lâl and blueEnergy’s third Co-founder Guillaume Craig, focused on building relationships with beneficiary communities and other key stakeholders and improving blueEnergy’s physical facilities and human capacity, while I focused on building the administrative and fundraising components of blueEnergy. 

Since 2004, blueEnergy has built and installed 8 energy systems, which some have commented seems like few.  The reasons for this low number are: 1) to date most efforts have gone into developing our models and our capacities to deliver sustainable energy services in a very challenging environment and 2) blueEnergy has operated in a state of extreme resource scarcity since its inception.  2007 saw blueEnergy take great strides and attract attention for its accomplishments in difficult circumstances and I am confident that 2008 will see an end to the resource scarcity.  From there we will be able to get our models and operational capacities to a level where our publicly-visible results fall in line with our vision.

 A lot of what we do at blueEnergy is manage expectations.  We identified this early on as a big risk to our organization.  People are desperate for energy and once they see you have something that works, people come out of the woodwork and mistakenly think you're going to light up their community like New York, and for free.  Since the beginning we took great care to explain to the potential beneficiary communities on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua that our solution is an incremental step towards the larger development picture and requires a high level of beneficiary involvement.  Our solution can provide modest amounts of electricity, but electricity that has an extremely high marginal value because it's the first.  Going from zero lights in your home to one light is a huge improvement.  Going from 10 lights to 11 lights is a much smaller marginal improvement.  Our systems can't power every major appliance people can think of, at least not now, and that's been hard for people to understand at times.

Since our CNN exposure, the demands for our help coming from around the world have increased dramatically.  Here's a look at who visited our website from Dec 6 2007 to Jan 4 2008.  Over 11,500 people and from all over the world:

These website visits generate a tremendous number of comments and questions.  The vast majority follow a similar theme, of the type: "I am a [citizenship] national living in [country]. Have you ever thought about bringing your project to [country]? Here we have no light and contaminated water and your work would be very helpful. What can I do to bring your project here?"

Some examples:

"i live here in the philippines i would a solar power for the home. some thing small just to run some fans and light but the thing is i dont have lot of money becuase am on a small pension i was wondering if you can help in someway thanks and god bless"

"I M A MECHANICAL ENGINEER TEACHING IN A TECHNICAL COLLEGE, IN FAISALABAD PAKISTAN.PAKISTAN IS A DEVELOPING COUNTRY, THERE IS MUCH CRISIS OF ENERGY , SO I REQUEST TO START UR PROJECT HERE, I WILL FEEL HONOR TO BE UR VOLEUTEER. I ALWAYS SEARCHING SUSTAINABLE ENERGY RESOURCES. SO PLEASE HELP POOR PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN . THANKS A LOT"

"My Country is Liberia, West Africa. Liberia has just ended 14 years of civil war two years ago. All infursture was distroyed during the war. No electricity for the rural villages and towns. Can blueEnergy assist with project to provide electricity to some selected schools, for adult education at night and medical clinics for preserving needed drugs and vaccines? What are the requirements we need? Matthias Craig, story on CNN, he is a hero. "

"Dear Sir/madam, I am currently the director of a local NGO called 'Computers For Schools Sierra Leone". We have been supplying refurbished donated computers from Canda for the past year and half. We have been able to supply 500 computers into this war -torn country. Sierra Leone has had a ten year civil war in which all the infracturture was damaged. However our efforts have been hamppered because most areas don't have any power supply. I am kindly asking if there was any way you could extend your program in this country. This is a country that has been listed as the second world' poorest country. Once again I want to thank you very much for the difference you are trying to make in the lives of people. Thanks in advance. Kind regards"

"Greetings. I am the Chairman & CEO of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. Our mission is to bring electricity to all Nigerians, grid and off-grid... our commission is interested in low cost and sustainable energy for the nation. Pls, let me how we can develop this project including PPP."

"I am an American citizen of Dominican background and I would like to find out how to bring this program to the Dominican Republic. Thank you.    "

"I live in Sri lanka. I am a Candian citizen. Would you be interested in starting a similar project out here. Thanks"

We are flattered by these messages, but what can we do? Growing organically and managing expectation is what has kept us alive and gotten us to where we are today.  Diluting our attention and resources could have devastating consequences for us right now.  Right now we need more support and we need to stay focused on refining our models.  When our business model is to the point where it's robust enough to be replicated (with constant modification of course) around the world, we'll push ahead.  The world wants blueEnergy and we want to deliver it, it's just a matter of figuring out the small details to bridge the two desires :)

If you want to dedicate yourself to helping us make this a reality, please visit us here.

On my trip to Nicaragua in late September / early October 2007 I figured it out.  

For all intensive purposes, Hugh Piggott is the originator of the wind turbine technology we employ.  Some of the deep technical roots go further back, but he put it all together and popularized it.  However, Hugh comes from a particular paradigm - hobbyists building "one-of-a-kind" machines that they will look after personally.  I don't use the term "hobbyist" lightly - some people depend on these systems for all their electricity.  I just mean that they are tinkerers - people with craft skills and an interest in the minute details of small wind technology, and who are mostly into it for personal use.

Then Dan Bartmann and his Otherpower.com crew came along and started building larger quantities of Piggott-inspired turbines.  They started looking at "series" production issues but were still producing for a dedicated, "hobbyist" (again not diminishing the importance of the turbines to these people) crowd.

blueEnergy's innovation, as I can now clearly see, is in taking this technology into the development realm (ie. the developing world) and making it work when the builders and users aren't necessarily wind fanatics, the conditions are tough and the demand is enormous.  In this paradigm, ease of use and reliability are of the utmost importance.  

The development paradigm requires a lot of innovation at the process level to make the technology work for people and at a reasonable cost.  At the base level, you need technology that is "appropriate" - ie. that is workable in a particular environment.  But having a workable technology is only the beginning.  Getting it to actually work requires tremendous effort on the social side of creating human systems to support the technological system. 

blueEnergy’s innovation is the wrapper that makes the workable technology of small scale wind power actually work in real-life environments in the developing world.