Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) Rural Electrification Project

One of the primary goals of the rural electrification project is to work with developing country NGOs, governments, and entrepreneurs to design the technical and management systems needed to facilitate village electrification. The design, testing, and local integration of small-scale, locally built renewable energy systems will be central to this effort. Sustainable local energy services have been demonstrated to play a major role in bringing basic health and educational services to rural, peri-urban, and under-served urban communities, and to play a dominant role in poverty reduction through expanded economic opportunities for the poor. This project has the potential to provide drastically needed technical design and testing services along with implementation support that will improve the potential for locally driven rural electrification in developing countries.

Ongoing projects

• Testing Small Wind Turbines: We are in the process of setting up the testing tower and measurement equipment at Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station in order to begin testing small wind turbines according to AWEA’s draft standard specifications. These include a standardized measurement of a wind turbines power curve, its safety and reliability, acoustic characteristics, and a duration test. The first turbine that will be tested will be a 1kW turbine who design is being used by the Nicaraguan NGO blueEnergy.
• Redesigning Blade Materials: A group of mechanical engineers are working on the engineering specifications for the fiberglass construction of 6 foot blades, as a class project for ME 127 Composite Materials
• Redesigning Blade Shapes: Updating the blade design from a hand-carved 1930's era airfoil design to a more optimized design for molding.
• Redesigning the Generator: Improving the generator design to accommodate capacities greater than 1 kW.
• Rural Electrification Guide: Sharing our research and organizing publications on rural electrification into an open-access rural electrification guide.
• A group of graduate students are working on characterizing the lifetime of lead acid batteries, utilized under the charging and discharging conditions that might be found in rural off-grid power systems and battery charging stations. This is part of a class project for Chem Eng 295F Battery Technology and Markets.

 Current tasks (authorized users only)

• Setting up testing equipment
  

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