===================
*****UPDATE*****
The roadtrip has now been cancelled due to lack
of funds. Thank you heaps to the contributors and sorry to not be able
to put your donations to work on this, but rest assured itll still be
spent on solarflower related activities.
I think at this stage Im off to Paris to start an urban farming collective based on the greenhouse design ( http://urbangreenhouse.blogspot.com ) and other technologies.
Which isnt such a bad fallback position, tho it wouldve been nice to tour us some festivals. O well.
Then, after the summer, start in on the world tour, probably heading
through Turkey to the middle east and Asia. So stay tuned. You can
follow all this on http://solarflower.blogspot.com
And thanks once again for your support. Ill see you amongst it.
====================
After a year and a half of prototyping, the SolarFlower is now ready for beta release.
It's an open source solar energy device which can be
made from recycled materials by anyone anywhere, practically for
free using very basic tools and skills. It is powerful, efficient,
has no emissions, requires no fuel and little maintenance.
The device uses a simple non electrical mechanism to
accurately track the sun and collect energy, which can then be used
for generating electricity, heating or purifying water, cooking,
producing bio-char, or anything else heat can be used for.
Full animated tutorials
will be available for free from the website;
http://www.solarflower.org
Now that the device is
working the next step for the project is to increase awareness of it,
and so we'll be spending the summer touring European ecovillages,
communities and festivals, offering hot showers and free workshops on
the device's construction.This has the potential to put us in contact with up to tens of thousands of people, who would otherwise be unaware that these solutions and technologies exist, and that they can easily make them themselves.
For this we need funds.
Appropriate
technologies like this; which work, are free and open and accessible
to the world, have the potential to fundamentally change the way in
which we produce energy, food, water, communications, community and
almost everything else.
Then the tour heads through Turkey and the Middle East, through Asia to the Pacific.
Budget:
The costs of this leg
of the trip will likely break down as follows:
1,000 fuel for the
vehicle
300 salary for
participants
300 food and other
expenses
400 vehicle
maintenance, contingencies, etc.
Accommodation will
be mostly ecovillages, festivals etc who will host us as support of
the project. Other than that a mix of couchsurfing and tents.
If the funding goal is
not fully met the money will still be used for the expenses that
arise during the trip, which will be happening either way, the shortfall
coming from the project. However, as we have no funding
sources besides personal savings, this will likely cut short the
trip, which we were hoping to be doing for the next 2-3 years.
Other Ways You Can
Help:
More info here:
http://www.solarflower.blogspot.com
Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_184038684971498&ap=1
Facebook event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=166441523415416
Please proliferate this via social media, invite your friends, et cetera.
And if you really want
to be amongst it, join the open source hardware community and start
building your own energy devices.
Other projects:
An
ultra simple to construct, high volume greenhouse:
http://urbangreenhouse.blogspot.com
A non-electrical
cooling system for homes and growing spaces:
http://urbangreenhouse.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html
And a non-turbine
resonant wind generator, but this remains to be prototyped just yet.
These and other
projects we also hope to promote and develop this summer.
Thank you for your
time, and for all the support received. It makes this fun.
