Design and testing of a small human-powered generator for developing rural communities

Abstract

Access to reliable electricity remains unavailable to approximately one fifth of the world's population, with a disproportionate concentration of these people living in developing or rural communities. This paper describes the design, construction and testing of a small human-powered generator for electrical energy conversion in developing rural communities. The generator is designed to provide small amounts of electrical power in the range of 1-10 W so that electronic devices such as Light Emitting Diode lamps, cellular phones and radios-all of which are becoming increasingly common in rural communitiescan be used. A permanent magnet axial flux generator is determined to be most suitable for this application. The designed generator is unique in that it it can be constructed using locally available materials and lay manufacturing processes. Theoretical and circuit models of the generator are developed. Laboratory test results, culminating in a proof-of-concept test on a cellular phone from Zambia, are provided.

Nine Principles for Design for the Developing World as Derived From the Engineering Literature

“…Candid discussions of successes and failures that support this principle are provided in [16,26,[87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95].…”

“…They observed that using existing technology to reduce the effects of poverty can actually create unanticipated use-scenarios and demands for that technology-even a new use-scenario that does not reduce the effects of poverty. In the area of rural electrification, various researchers express concerns in support of this principle [21,89,101,102].…”

Energy Harvesting from Upper-Limb Pulling Motions for Miniaturized Human-Powered Generators

“…Figure 3 shows the APMM scheme proposed in this study in which a neodymium (NdFeB) magnet rotor and the coil stator are coupled in an axial direction for better miniaturization [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. All 12 magnets were positioned in the disc rotor along its edge with alternating polarities.…”

Using human-powered products for sustainability and health: Benefits, challenges, and opportunities

“…The increase in electricity consumption from using consumer electronics such as televisions, home computing, tablet PCs and other power supply units outstands as their energy usage are still at an incremental rate (DECC, 2011). Humanpowered products (HPP), has been perceived in recent research as alternatives to mobile battery running electronic products (Jansen, 2011;Jansen and Stevels, 1999), and a generator to power electronics in rural communicties (Louie et al, 2010). Scholars have often looked at parasitic ways to harvest the energy from daily human movements such as using children's play energy (Pandian, 2004), using walking energy to power implantable medical devices (Jia and Liu, 2009;Rao et al, 2014), and using body heat to power wearable computing devices (Starner, 1996).…”

“…This would mean that the physical activities needed in generating the required power and performance of using stored energy will likely be reduced over the years. For example, a study conducted by Louie et al (2010) shows that 80 percent of full voltage of a mobile phone can be charged in 1 h (hour) using the small human-powered generator. The key question that the authors would like to address in this paper is: can we still live in a developed society but also improve its sustainability by bringing back or integrate the daily physical activities?…”