Local Universities Bring Electricity to Rural Areas of Honduras

Village Energy Inc., created by professors and students at Baylor University, is currently in business to bring electricity to the rural and remote communities in many developing countries. Today we will be featuring their current program going on in Honduras. Their primary goal is to deploy village-level electrical generation systems via hydroelectric distribution systems that are powered from the plentiful mountainous streams found throughout the rural areas of Honduras. Another goal of the team is to provide "business-in-a-box" entrepreneurial training to the rural franchise owners who will maintain these systems, collect payments, and prevent theft.

Village Energy Inc. is offering these hydropower franchises to villagers as a way to improve their quality of life in the areas of health, safety, productivity, and income. The business structure of these franchise units will help to generate returns for investors as well as spawn village-level micro enterprises. The business structure will follow the strict guidelines of the theory of Triple Bottom Line company business practices, which states that a business must help the people, the planet, and provide a sustainable profit which will allow the business to thrive on its own.

The benefits of this franchise opportunity will also offer a simple method of cleaning up rural Honduras by replacing fossil fuel-burning and battery operated flashlights with electric lights. The Village Energy Inc. team did a survey with the villagers of Honduras and found that they were no longer a 100 percent sustaining society now that they were introducing old batteries into the earth (usually two pairs of D-cells per month) along with their other waste. In-house electricity will help curb this high use of batteries in these villages, while also allowing them the opportunity to take advantage of other electrical devices in a number of other economically viable ways.

We ask Brian Thomas (Senior Lecturer at Baylor University's department of Electrical and Computer Engineering), Dr. Greg Leman (Clinical Professor in the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University), and Ryan McGhee (Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration) more about this project:

Planet Green: Tell us more about Baylor's Project in Honduras?
Ryan McGhee: This project stemmed out of a series of projects that were done through a missionary engineering group here at Baylor. We went to Honduras two years ago and installed several small micro-hydropower systems. Through previous experiences we have learned that it is not enough to have a functioning electric system, we also need to have the business side of it. Right now what we are doing is micro-franchising.

We are trying to get these systems set-up and running so that we can replicate it as many times as possible all over the world. We are going to be incorporating with the name Village Energy Incorporated, and our goal is to generate green energy and deliver that to people who have for various reasons been left off the grid. Right now we are using micro-hydropower systems that produce anywhere from one to fifteen kilowatts of power.

We want to get to the point where we know we have the technology and the infrastructure down and we are ready to take this into a franchising category. One of the stipulations of doing franchising is you need to have as many of the variables nailed down as you possibly can. One of the other names for micro-franchising is "business in a box" and I think that expresses it very well. We come in and train someone within just a few weeks time to run the system and operate it. We then help them over the next few years, as they gradually take over partial ownership, and in the end they can take active participation in the operation of the system.

Brian Thomas: The other systems we did in previous years, although they may have been technically viable, there was nobody who owned the system, and therefore it was communally owned and nobody took care of maintenance or profiting from the system as a business. We wanted to put it in a financial mechanism to ensure that someone had a clear ownership and therefore an invested financial interest in maintaining and keeping it moving forward and improving it.

How do these micro-hydropower systems work?
RM: Right now we are using what is called run of river systems. We take the water out of the stream and run it through some sort of a pen stock or flume, then down through the hydro-turbine and then put it back into the river. We don't perceive needing to install any dams. Occasionally we will need a very small coffer dam to direct the flow off to the side where we capture a portion of the flow. It is a very environmentally benign system. We don't use a huge, environmentally damaging dam.

The electricity that comes out of it is direct current. It charges the battery pack and then we have an inverter system which converts from DC to AC and provides power to a small distribution grid. The present system has 23 houses connected. Each house is able to receive up to 120 watts of electricity. It is a small amount of electricity, so you are obviously not going to be running air conditioners, electric stoves or even microwaves, but it is enough to get them away from using kerosene lanterns. Instead they are using compact fluorescent lights.

Getting away from kerosene must be a huge benefit for these systems.
BT: Yes, as Ryan alluded to, the lanterns these people are using are similar to a hurricane lantern, which is something you still see in the United States at camping supply places, but more commonly they use homemade lanterns that they call "candils". It is essentially a Molotov cocktail style of light that is typically made out of a glass jar that they put a wick into and fill with kerosene.

It is a very dangerous device, because if you drop it, the glass breaks, the kerosene goes everywhere, and then you've got a fire. They are also very energy inefficient and therefore expensive to operate for the amount of light that you get out of them. They give off lots of toxic fumes and soot from incomplete combustion of the kerosene that stains the walls of their homes and gets into their lungs. These fumes have been shown to cause respiratory problems in children. Reducing the usage of Kerosene burning lanterns is one of our primary social impact goals. It is also an obvious global environmental benefit by reducing CO2 emissions from burning kerosene.

Why have these folks not been connected to the Honduras grid yet?
RM: These agencies are focusing on people that are in a dollar a day poverty range. The people we are working with are making slightly less than $5 per working day. We are in a slightly different economic bracket. They are still poor, but not so incredibly poor that they can't take care of their other more base needs. Once established in the villages we are hoping to sell electricity in larger quantities, so people can run a sewing machine or do some sort of agricultural processing, such as using a corn husker. We will sell this additional electricity in the middle of the day to people who are able to do economic value added productions.

BT: We tried to implement a battery recharging system for lights, but people wanted more than just lights. There is a demand for small appliances as well. They would be satisfied with just light, but what they really wanted was electricity in the home. We really tried to shift our efforts towards this last year to bringing more than just light so they can then do with the electricity as they please.

Greg Leman: In working homes the production of electricity itself opened up a number of small business opportunities that can create more economic impact. That is also part of the overall business plan. For the longer term, electricity will be more self-propagating to higher levels of impact for the entire community.

What ways could our readers aid you in your venture to bring light to more villagers in Honduras?
RM: We are certainly looking for donations. We are in the start-up process. Our goal is to make this financially sustainable and viable. We are looking for people interested in triple bottom line investments.

BT: If someone wanted to come along and make say a $13,000 donation, they could electrify an entire village. A $250 donation will provide the infrastructure to connect a family to one of our grids. And for a donation of $25, a villager could be employed to help us construct the system in their village, which would help them earn their way out of poverty.

Village Energy, Inc. is certainly setting the stage to make a big difference in a lot of peoples lives. We thank Brian, Greg, and Ryan for sharing this project with us, and we hope that they will keep us up to date on their continued efforts.

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