Village Power - The Community Charging Station  REMIX 

Hello, we are students in the 2009/10 Industrial Design class at Kansas University in Lawrence Kansas USA. We are interested in applying socially directed design to make meaningful contributions to solving everyday problems faced by the majority of people in our world today. We are offering our collaboration as design students to contribute to this community charging station and assist in advancing its presentation or implementation in some way. Inspired by the problem statement posted we have ideas and questions we hope can be clarified by collaborative input from those of you who are experts in your field or have lived or observed the condition the community charging station intends to resolve. Here are some of the initial questions we would like some help with:

1.) Have the solar panels had a direct effect on the economies of West Africa? Or is this primarily oriented in improving the lives of the villagers.

2.) Has your organization thought about using a mobile charging station. This would include a maneuverable charging station with multiple compartments for batteries; which, then could be checked out and distributed to the people on a nightly basis.

3.) Given a typical village, how many solar panels are needed and what are the approximate sizes of the panels?

4.) Do the people that have been trained to take care of the solar panels have to adjust the panels throughout the day/year for optimum sun intake?

            -Suggestion: the use of a sundial could be benificial in this process.

Thanks for your time, we hope our ideas are of use and encourage your effort. Feedback is appreciated if possible, including help in other ways.

Group: Neal N., Sara H., Matt C.