A quick Google search will tell you that a 500 A, 12 V battery will store 6000 watts (using Ohm’s law check it here).

A top class cyclist has an energy output of 400+ Wh at his maximum steady state (maximum heart beat rate in aerobic metabolism). An average man without doctor but with training will be in the 300 – 350 Wh range. An average man without training will be around 250 Wh at maximum steady state.

Summing up, with some training a healthy man can probably recharge a car battery in two days, pedaling 10 hours each day, at say 90% of his maximum steady state. If possible this a monstrous physical task…

While all of this is fascinating, nothing equivalent could happen in the UK.

In England he would be unemployed. This is because he would have left prison. He would have gone to prison becuase he could not employ expensive legal counsel and challenge Govt red-tape. He would have been in court because a policeman and a man from the council would have served him a summons to court for trading in the street. He could have a phd in electronics and passed the UK wiring regs exam, yet he would not be able to defend his installation against charges that he did not 'self certify' his electrical apparatus for electromagnetic radiation compatibility [EU regs, I'm not making this up!]. He would also have to have a 'Part P' qualified installation, and prove that he could recycle his electrical equipment under the correct EU directive etc......Of course, his lack of public liability insurance would have shafted him already!

This is why an infintesimal proportion of the UK will have DIY renewable energy, or anything usefully improvised. It's basically totally impractical legally, except for a small minority who will get piss poor value through following govt pressure group bureaucracy. It's also why we dont manufacture anything in the UK except in globalised companies etc.

with apologies to Alan Drake:

Best wishes for buck-shee practical solutions..

best

When you read articles like this it really brings home the massive differences that exist in this world and the major possible improvements that even relatively small amounts of money applied correctly could bring to peoples lives.

One of Africas major resources is solar power -with the soon-coming economics of thin film PV African (and other) Nations could invest in manufacturing plants pumping out cheap 100Watt class panels that could be applied in rural situations like this dramatically improving quality of life.

Nokia Challenge (are you listening?): Create, using cheap thin film PV technology, a super-cheap charger for phones that can also power a range of other low power home devices like radios, LED Lighting, etc. Better still, start to embed solar panels for trickle charge into your products -'The SunnyBoy2008' eco-range! [IMO, this is exactly the type of thinking that will make products fly of the shelfs as we enter the age of 'The Compassionate Corporation']

Regards, Nick.

THE POST MODERN DAYS IN THE DESERT

I am not sure I have seen many stories that are so odd, strange, post modern, post industrial, post future shock....simply odd and bizarre, but in ways that we boomers will be the last generation to be able to appreciate. Poverty, decentralization, technical solutions on odd and mixed scale, the "information age, the mix of Nokia and the hawker of the street charge, cell phones mixed with third world starvation and abuse....almost poetic in it's implication for the complex and strange brew that will only become more common with each passing year. The future in which no scenario makes sense unless one can track back through the politics, the money, the mix of high tech and third world....a friend of mine recently gave me one of the card type cell phones that her son had used. I have had it about 4 months, and made some 4 calls, 2 of them to time and tempeture just to make sure the account was still live. It has to be the single most odd and useless device I have ever owned, and yet seemingly, a device worth sacrificing for in Uganda.

As I read the article and comments, a song kept coming back into my head. The poets seem to intuitively understand the weirdness we are now facing:

The Boy in the Bubble
by Paul Simon

It was a slow day,
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road,
There was a bright light,
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio,
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all,
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry,

It was a dry wind,
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth,
And the dead sand,
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth,
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all o-yeah,
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry

It's a turn-around jump shot
It's everybody jump start
It's, every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,
Medicine is magical and magical is art think of
The, Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle,
Lasers in the jungle somewhere,
Staccato signals of constant information,
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby,
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all o-yeah,
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry don't cry

Roger Conner Jr
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
(but much closer than that to infinite strangeness)

3 days to recharge a car battery? This is very inefficient. They need to go study in Cambodia.

Here, you simply leave your battery on the street in the morning. The service comes by and picks up your battery on a motorcycle with a trailer. The batteries are hauled back to the village, where they are charged by diesel generator. Battery chargers are too expensive, so they just wire up 15 batteries in series and connected directly to the AC mains with a large diode.

In the afternoon, the same motorcycle delivery man returns the batteries fully charged before nightfall. Of course, the lack of a proper charging circuit does tend to destroy the batteries, but they actually last about 4 years in practice.

The charge costs 1000 Riel, which is about $0.25 USD. A family which is a heavy energy user, or a family with a very old battery might require this service once every 3 days. Some familes with a new battery can last as long as 2 weeks between charges.

There is generally one charging service provider in every village, and the fact that they charge so many batteries at the same time means the diesel generator is actually fairly efficient. This same entrepeneur usually runs the generator for 4 hours at night to provide electrical service to those families close enough to him, provided he can get enough interest to make it profitable.

Electric meters are rare. Generally, the provider simply visits your home and estimates how much power you will use based on appliances. You then get a fixed bill per month. As an example, running a single 20 watt flourescent light generally costs about $2 USD per month flat rate. You have to prepay.

If you also have a TV, you will have to pay more. Wiring is done by stringing cheap copper wire between trees or makeshift poles. Theft of the wire is a problem during the 20 hours when electric service is turned off, so this is a risky business for the entrepeneur.

For larger consumers and more sophisticated entrepeneurs, standard meters are provided. They cost about $10 USD, which is very expensive. The entrepeneur usually has to front the money and recover it over several months. The metered rate is currently about $0.80 USD per kWh. (Yes, that's 80, not 8) Remember, power is only available for 4 hours every evening. Bills tend to be in the range of 5 kWh per month per house.

There are many ways to survive off grid in developing countries. I recommend everyone spend a few weeks off grid in a developing economy to learn how wasteful the western world really is.

Tom In Thailand

Arthur Robey

Sigh! As an ex-African colonial, what can I say? We had such hopes for the Jewel of Africa. It was doing so well.

I know what we can say!!

"We told you so."

But the west was so wrapped up in their guilt, they needed someone else to pay their debt.
Come on Baby Boomers!! All you who ranted in the streets to remove the colonials.
You caused the problems in Africa. Now go and fix the problem..No Don't look away.. Yes, you sir.. Go to Africa and don't come back until you have fixed all of Africa's problems.
What? I thaught you were our moral superiors!!
Never mind, in the next Concert For Uganda you can contribute 50c.
Bloody Morons.

I smell a future bussiness opportunity for my kids....

Check this site out, has Worldwide Interactive Carbon Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State energy consumptions, demographics and Country and State energy offices.

http://www.eredux.com/states/

In other words, how do I recharge my phone at the end of the world. I am simply speechless. Do we have a clue here? Is this like, can I plug in my curling iron after peak oil? Sheesh. What a mindless waste of time.

There's a report available on the internet that there is a major oil discovery in Uganda, as high perhaps as "several billion barrels" Google Uganda,Oil, discovery to see the available reports. The discovery is owned by Tullow Resources, a company I'm not familiar with. According to the CIA Factbook, Uganda has 31 million people, a life expectancy of about 51 years, and a per capita income of around $1700. Its a country with a village economy, a high population growth rate of 3.5%. So its a miserable place, landlocked, ruled by a dictatorship, and far outside the global mainstream.
Bob Ebersole

Am I the only one who finds an advert for "good acid" rather amusing? :)

Uganda I'm not surprised about for electricity. I recently heard that Kuwait is expected to have rolling brownouts! If a country like Kuwait with all the money it needs and little to no public process can't get it together, who can?

If you really want to know a big reason for why Africa is so poor, read Capitalism's Achilles Heel by Raymond W. Baker

This writer, who has an MBA from Harvard Business School, estimates that around one Trillion dollars leaves Africa each year - to the benefit of American and European bankers and economies.

In fact, anyone who reads this book will be surprised at the similarities with Matthew R. Simmons' Twilight in the Desert Very dry and full of facts. I guess it is the way they are taught to do it at Harvard.

Unfortunately, the poor education of the masses allows the elite (which may not have a better education) to get away with it. I think the elite can afford the advisers, lawyers and bankers who help them get away with it.

If in any doubt about the underlying facts, check out Mobutu or Abacha. To my knowledge virtually none of the tens of billions these two alone stole were returned.

I'm sure the answer is here somewhere

http://www.scienceshareware.com/bicycle-generator-faq.htm#charge-car-bat...

My guess...

15 hours and 36 minutes.

There are many programs to provide low or zero cost solar power for poor countries. Solar has the huge advantage that despite is high capital cost it usually requires no maintenance or fuel and will generate power for up to 30 years.

Here are some programs that are in place for helping:

http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/02/03/solar-power-for-developing-nati...

One is:

" 10 facts about solar

1. The earth receives more energy from the sun in just one hour than the world uses in a whole year. That’s why SolarAid believes solar power is so important for development.

2. Two billion people in the world have no access to electricity. For most of them, solar power would be their cheapest electricity source, but they cannot afford it. SolarAid helps to redress this through small-scale solar projects for poor communities.

3. Building a small solar charger for a radio can cost around £5 and can sell for three times the price in Malawi. That’s why SolarAid is helping rural villages in Malawi set up small solar businesses so they can earn a living.

4. SolarAid is the only UK charity specialising in solar energy for poor countries.

5. Most rural poor in Africa use kerosene lamps, which are heavily polluting in CO2 and bad for their health, but a solar lamp would be cheaper and better for the environment.

6. Solar panels have a life expectancy of at least 25 years – making them a very dependable source of electricity.

7. Lack of access to affordable electricity is a major cause of poverty in rural areas in Africa, which is why SolarAid focuses on these regions, using solar power for education and health.

8. Africa has the lowest fossil energy use of any world region, yet the continent is the most vulnerable to climate change. Signs of a changing climate have already emerged there: disease and melting glaciers in the mountains, rising temperatures in drought-prone areas, and sea-level rise and coral bleaching along the coastlines.

9. Respiratory diseases caused by toxic smoke from cooking fires kill 1.5 million women and children each year. Yet a solar cooker, which is much safer, can be easily built from cardboard and waste reflective material.

10. SolarAid is a unique charity that has been set up to help fight climate change and global poverty at the same time."

A solar cooker built for almost nothing can save a family from buying fuel. Remember these are the people who are experiencing Peak Oil as we moan about having to put up with boring cars or maybe having to use 10kW per day instead of being lazy and using 20kW per day.

All this discussion of pedal power has its merits, but aside for a lower initial investment, human power generators are inferior to photovoltaics (PVs). Stationary bicycles are laborious to use, and require maintenance. In contrast, PV panels require little or no maintenance (other than cleaning a couple of times a year) and require no labor. They just sit there and work. Adding a battery bank means more maintenance (terminal cleaning, hydrometer checks, adding water, etc.) and the recurring cost of new batteries roughly every 8 or 9 years, but will of course provide power after dark.

My advice: Unless you live above 60 degrees of lattitude, PVs are the better way to go. For a discussion of an inexpensive "mini" PV system, see this recent post over at SurvivalBlog:
http://www.survivalblog.com/2007/05/letter_re_running_a_laptop_fro.html

Jim Rawles
Editor, www.SurvivalBlog.com -- The Daily Web Log for Prepared Individuals Living in Uncertain Times