Monday, April 13, 2009

May Plans for Honduras

Ten engineering students and a few other folks are planning to take another trip to Honduras next month. We will spend two weeks there upgrading our pico hydro electric system in the rural village called Danta Uno where we worked last summer. Our plan is to replace the Kill-A-Watt meters and fuses with a new electronically resetting circuit breaker. It works like this: if you use too many lights or appliances, the current limit will be exceeded and it will disconnect your house from the power. After 15 seconds it automatically reconnects if you have lessened your load by unplugging something.

We also plan to design and build a distribution grid for a new system in another village where we have some relationships, Pueblo Nuevo. The system there provides lights for a church and a house, plus charges cell phones. We want to expand it to bring power to the 50-60 houses there. We used a GPS receiver to get the latitude and longitude of each home in the village, and then we used Google Earth to design the layout. I will post pictures soon.

1 comment:

Melanie said...

That sounds like so much fun! I'm sure you guys will have a blast! Can't wait to hear all about it! Miss you all!