Preliminaries

Greetings!

As you may or may not know, I'm leaving on Wednesday (May 27) for a 10-week service-learning trip to Managua, Nicaragua.  In order to help keep friends/family members up to date on what I'm doing and how things are going, I decided to do the previously unthinkable, and enter the dark realm of the blogosphere.  I'll hopefully be posting once every few days with updates on how things are going, and anything interesting that I think of sharing.

The trip is through the University of Dayton ETHOS (Engineers in Technical Humanitarian Opportunities of Service) program, which sends around 30 engineers to various locations around the world each year to work on local needs-based projects.  Some of these projects include the development and testing of solar ovens and solar autoclaves, design and production of Rocket Stoves, and the design and installation of rainwater collection and irrigation systems amongst many others.

My friend, Jim Hoffman, and I are going down to Managua to work with Suni Solar, a company that is dedicated to the promotion and implementation of sustainable energy practices in Nicaragua, specializing in solar photovoltaics (PV), high efficiency appliances, and low cost local energy solutions.  So far, I am not exactly sure what we will be doing, but I believe it will be along the lines of designing and fabricating solar PV arrays out of factory-reject solar cells.  These panels can be constructed for an incredibly low price and can range anywhere from 60 to a few hundred watts.  Since they are fairly low cost, the panels are available for purchase by those of meagre means, and are often bought through the combined efforts of multiple families, or entire villages.  Once installed, the panels gather solar energy throughout the day, and charge a battery within the home.  At night, the family(s) are then able to run a few simple appliances such as light bulbs and fans.  This may not seem like much, but it extends the productive hours of the day by providing light, allowing children and adults to read and study to advance their education, or work on cottage-industry crafts that can be sold to help support the family.

One of the most interesting elements of any service learning experience is that its effect is not necessarily constrained to the person directly participating.  I invite you now to become engaged with me in the ETHOS experience!  Please feel free to comment with any thoughts, or questions you may have, or feel free to email me any time at timothy.raffio@gmail.com.

Thanks for coming, hopefully you'll be back, and I'll be posting again sometime later this week.

-Tim Raffio