Teen’s DIY Energy Hacking Gives African Village New Hope

Teen’s DIY Energy Hacking Gives African Village New Hope
By Kim Zetter October 2, 2009 | 1:32 pm | Categories: Energy, Tech

Some people see lemons and make lemonade. William Kamkwamba saw wind and made a windmill.

This might not seem like a mighty feat. But Kamkwamba, who grew up in Masitala, a tiny rural farming village off the grid in Malawi, was 14 years old in 2001 when he spotted a photo of a windmill in a U.S. textbook one day. He decided to make one, hacking together a contraption from strips of PVC pipe, rusty car and bicycle parts and blue gum trees.

Though he ultimately had big designs for his creation, all he really wanted to do initially was power a small bulb in his bedroom so he could stay up and read past sunset.

But one windmill has turned into three, which now generate enough electricity to light several bulbs in his family’s house, power radios and a TV, charge his neighbors’ cellphones and pump water for the village’s fields and household use.

Now 22, Kamkwamba wants to build windmills across Malawi and perhaps beyond. Next summer he also plans to construct a drilling machine to bore 40-meter holes for water and pumps. His aim is to help Africans become self-sufficient and resolve their problems without reliance on foreign aid.

“The problem we have is electricity and water problems,” he says. “I want to be tackling all of them at once.”

In a country steeped in superstition and wracked by crushing hardship and government corruption, Kamkwamba’s story is remarkable for its ingenuity and persistence.

Kamkwamba wasn’t a natural-born over-achiever. Before windmills, his biggest ambition was to be a car mechanic. But when he was ejected from public school at 14 because his family couldn’t afford the $80 tuition, his life seemed destined for the planting fields and back-breaking labor of his father, an impoverished maize and tobacco grower. Even that fate fell into question when drought and severe famine struck Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest nations, in 2001 and 2002. It whittled away at Kamkwamba’s already thin frame and killed off neighbors and friends, which he recounts with journalist Bryan Mealer in an engaging and spirited new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

Rain and crops slowly returned the following season, but Kamkwamba still couldn’t afford tuition. So with time on his hands, he began visiting a rural library where he found two textbooks — Explaining Physics and Using Energy — that detailed the marvels of electricity. The cover of the latter book featured a long row of towering windmills planted on brown hills, which “appeared so powerful that they made the photo itself appear to be in motion.”

Malawi was short on many resources, but not wind. A windmill, Kamkwamba thought, would solve many problems for his parents and six sisters. Not only could it generate free electricity — saving his family the economic costs and health hazards of burning kerosene — but it could also pump deep well water to the family’s maize and tobacco crops, releasing them from the tyranny of weather patterns and allowing them to add a second growing season to their harvest year.

“With a windmill, I could stay awake at night reading instead of going to bed at seven with the rest of Malawi,” he writes. But more importantly, “with a windmill, we’d finally release ourselves from the troubles of darkness and hunger. . . A windmill meant more than just power, it was freedom.”

He started with a small prototype. Then, with help from a cousin and friend, spent many weeks scrounging makeshift parts to construct the real thing.

The plan was to attach blades to the back axle of a bicycle and generate electricity through a bike dynamo. When the wind blew the blades, the sprocket and bike chain would spin the bike wheel, which would charge the dynamo and send a current through wire to the house.

For windmill blades, Kamkwamba slit a bathhouse PVC pipe in two, then heated the pieces over hot coals to press the curled edges flat. To bore holes into the blades, he stuck a nail through half a corn cob, heated the metal red and twisted it through the blades. It took three hours to repeatedly heat the nail and bore the needed holes.

He then attached the long plastic blades to the shorter metal blades of a large tractor fan found in a dumpyard, and stripped out the piston from a large shock absorber to serve as the windmill shaft. To secure the plastic blades to the metal ones, he used proper nuts and bolts. But standing in for washers were 16 Carlsberg beer bottle caps, collected from outside the Ofesi Boozing Centre.

The dynamo, connected to a hand-crafted transformer, was sufficient to power a 12-volt battery that fed a current to a small light in his bedroom, where he fashioned an outlet and push button wall switch using the AC socket from a radio, copper wire, a plastic wall mount made from flattened PVC pipe and parts from a rubber flip-flop.

When it was all done, the windmill’s wing span measured more than eight feet and sat atop a rickety tower 15 feet tall that swayed violently in strong gales. He eventually replaced the tower with a sturdier one that stands 39 feet.

The windmill brought Kamkwamba instant local fame. Villagers who called him a pot-smoking madman when he was scrounging for parts made pilgrimages to marvel at the wind shrine in action. But in 2006 when the maize crop failed and drought and famine were on the horizon again, some blamed his windmill witchcraft for blowing away the rainclouds. The talk only died down after the government and aid groups began distributing food.

Despite Kamkwamba’s accomplishment, he still was unable to return to school because of the cost. But this began to change in late 2006. An education official who’d heard about the windmill came to visit and was amazed to learn that Kamkwamba had been out of school for five years. He arranged for Kamkwamba to attend secondary school at the government’s expense and brought journalists to the farm to see the windmill. A story published in the Malawi Daily Mail caught the attention of bloggers, which in turn caught the attention of organizers for the Technology Entertainment and Design conference.

In 2007 Kamkwamba spoke at the TED Global conference in Tanzania and got a standing ovation. Venture capitalists stepped forward with offers to fund his education and projects, and with money donated by them, he was able to put his cousin and several friends back into school, pay for some medical needs of his family, drill a borehole for a well and water pump, and install drip irrigation in his father’s fields and solar panels on his and other homes in the 60-family village.

The water pump has allowed his family to expand its crops. They’ve abandoned tobacco and now grow maize, beans, soybeans, potatoes and peanuts.

The windmills have also brought big lifestyle and health changes to the other villagers.

“The village has changed a lot,” Kamkwamba says. “Now the time that they would spend going to fetch water, they are using that time for doing other things. And also the water they are drinking now is clean water.”

The villagers have also stopped using kerosene, which means they no longer breathe in the toxic fumes and can use the money previously slated for fuel to buy other things. Kamkwamba’s example has now inspired other kids in the village to pursue science. Where previously they had no futures, Kamkwamba says they now see that if they put their mind to something, they can achieve.

“It has changed the way people think,” he says.

Kamkwamba is moving forward with his own education now and plans to teach other villagers how to build windmills. He’s currently a senior in high school at the African Leadership Academy, a pan-African prep school in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is studying for his SATs to apply to colleges in the United States. A documentary about his achievements is in the works.

Tags: DIY, hacks, windmill Comments (29)

Posted by: technophile | 10/2/09 | 3:59 pm
this is a great thing to read about. I wish we could read about more innovators like this and see that they get rewarded. More importantly its important that others of his peers see that doing innovative things to make life better will be rewarded and that they feel inspired to do positive things.

Posted by: esineon | 10/2/09 | 4:48 pm
Very nice read. Need to find his speech on TED

Posted by: RamoneC | 10/2/09 | 4:48 pm
Great story, and heartwarming to see local ingenuity for the great good. This line made me laugh though:

“William Kamkwamba saw wind and made a windmill.” He saw wind? That’s REALLY impressive!

/I kid of course!

Posted by: haevorn | 10/2/09 | 5:54 pm
Surely it is a great development of the situation for the kid and the whole vilage. However, i rather think he was fortunate enough to get into some bigger story which he probably isn’t aware of. Maybe some business deal between govenrment and foreign investors, or something, and Kamkwamba was just a nice “illustration”.

I mean, the whole story just sounds too much like a Cindarela fairytale. Did it really took a kid to give a Malawi government idea how to make use of windpower and he was so gratefully rewarded for it? I simply do not believe in fairytales, there must be some bigger picture around this.

How many such villages are there in Malawi, who funds windmills, who drills wells, who pays for all that? Who buys villagers crops, etc.

Should it be really that simple as in your article, the whole Africa would be flurishing, intstead of drowning in poverty.

Posted by: PatronVectras | 10/2/09 | 7:13 pm
Great story, and very well done documentary as well. I like the transitions from the Empire Sate Building to the helicopter ride to the wind farm.

Posted by: Palewan | 10/2/09 | 8:21 pm
haevorn - If you knew anything about Africa you wouldn’t think this is a fairy tale story. The big problem over there is the governments of most nations are incredibly corrupt and do not often fund projects like this. My buddy just got back from Tanzania and he was working on helping small villages implement changes like this. More outside organizations are helping Africa than their own governments.

Did you even read the same story I did? This kid made these windmills out of scraps. No government funded him, venture capitalists helped him out. Africa could flourish if it wasn’t for people thinking that it will just happen if the governments over there step in. It will take alot of hard work by people who truly care like Kamkwamba to make changes in Africa.

Posted by: landers | 10/2/09 | 8:58 pm
No deed restriction? No zoning ordinances? Only in Africa!

Posted by: Neal | 10/2/09 | 10:59 pm
Need more people like that.

Posted by: medchem90 | 10/3/09 | 1:38 am
so inspiring story..wishing him a good luck.
medicinalchemistry

Posted by: TecheView | 10/3/09 | 2:21 am
the human will to achieve should never be restricted

Posted by: koan4one | 10/3/09 | 5:32 am
Utterly inspiring. Middle class living in America I take too much for granted.

Posted by: haevorn | 10/3/09 | 5:56 am
palewan - I probably didn’t explain my thoughts clearly. This story is nothing more than a drip in the ocean of African poverty. Kamkwamba can only feel very fortunate, nothing less than a lottery winner, to be given the opportunity to develop his idea and to get funds for further schooling. But, this simple principle: I give you technology, you grow more crops, earn profit, return me money, we are all happy; somehow this principle does not work in Africa. Or else Africa would not be that poor.

Instead of everybody shining “oh, how nice story” I wanted to ask you how is it possible that in 21st century we are happy that some poor kid gets $80 to finish school. How come the majority of the whole continent is in the same trouble.

Do not be happy about this story. Be sad, be very sad, since this is not a normal everyday African event, this is more of an incident. And it would be great that I am wrong.

Posted by: re3e | 10/3/09 | 11:06 am
wow , this kid is awesome , i am myself a DIY VAWT enthousiast and i can see how wind electricity = freedom , this kid deserves a foundation to continue and expand his work

Posted by: VidJa | 10/3/09 | 2:23 pm
A great story, and to be honest, only boys and girls like William Kamkwamba will be able to save Africa from disaster. However, combined efforts with young scientists from western countries and a community willing to receive AND sustain cleaver projects will be even more effective. Read more about such projects at http://foundation-imagine.org/ . Projects like making biodiesel from algae living in ponds or Avocado oil from ‘waste’ harvest are all created by enhousiast young Dutch students.
If we all support these types of projects we may even achieve the all too necessary momentum to push Africa back in the spotlights.

Posted by: jdrake | 10/3/09 | 3:38 pm
I just saw William and Bryan speak at Northwestern University yesterday as part of the Global Engagement Summit (www.theges.org) speaker series. William’s tremendous creativity and intellect will be a real asset to Malawi in the coming years.

Posted by: UnitedSupportAndResistanceGroups | 10/3/09 | 5:28 pm
Of course it is great that the kid was building windmills, but there are other angles here. Now that overpopulation and global warming have reduced the groundwater, to start drilling wells. And when that water is gone too, what then? What does that do for the local environment? Also, he comes from a family of seven, all living in poverty. Do we humans have to increase our population to the point where the numbers are limited only by the hell of starvation, disease and war? Perhaps the Kamkwamba generation will think sustainability, and that goes way beyond energy. But, yes the story does represent some small hope and I give thanks for that.

Posted by: Sprax | 10/3/09 | 7:14 pm
Seriously impressive. Inspirational. Good luck!

Posted by: delahaya | 10/3/09 | 9:30 pm
Awesome, keep it up kid!

Posted by: mranger | 10/4/09 | 8:25 am
If i made a windmill i would get arrested and prosecuted its illegal to generate your own electricity in the UK

Posted by: macman1138 | 10/4/09 | 8:58 am
mranger, seems there’s not much freedom in the “free world” anymore.
However, here in rural Kentucky you could put up a windmill and generate your own juice and folks would think it’s pretty cool.

Posted by: benhorton_83 | 10/4/09 | 2:10 pm
My friend Sam and I had the privilege of showing William the internet for the first time. It was interesting to see someone exposed to unlimited information all at once. He was fresh and inspiring, and deserves all the attention he’s been getting.

Posted by: CameronLC | 10/4/09 | 3:11 pm
I really enjoyed this article, I would definitely like to seem more like this.

Posted by: turboblocke | 10/4/09 | 4:18 pm
Leg pull or disinformation? Whatever. It is not illegal to generate your own electricity in the UK. You do have to conform to applicable planning rules and regulations.

Posted by: cguimaraes66 | 10/5/09 | 5:02 am
After all there is still hope for mankind!

Posted by: Gover | 10/5/09 | 10:09 am
Smart kid…too bad so many people in Africa are like this though: “…some blamed his windmill witchcraft for blowing away the rainclouds.”

Good old religion. Is there any problem it can’t make worse?

Posted by: Druyx | 10/5/09 | 11:36 am
Why does this website insist on calling everything thats just sligthly innovative hacking? He didn’t HACK anything, he BUILT a windmill. Would you feet please hack your mouths!

Posted by: daxjordan | 10/5/09 | 5:22 pm
Druyx, these days people are using ‘hack’ to imply finding creative uses for technology other than that which is it’s intended purpose. The PVC and the nail in the corn and the bike parts for a wind turbine all fall well into this accepted usage.

Posted by: marcozark | 10/5/09 | 7:16 pm
This guy is “the man” in waterworld or madmax movies. Good for him, I hope someone or a company step up to make his vision more accessable.

Posted by: JunkScienceSkeptic | 10/5/09 | 11:30 pm
Like William Kamkwamba, Ford, Edison and many others were poor, self-educated tinkerers working with scraps here in the USA about 100 years ago. They set an example, and with those who followed, brought what we now refer to as the developed world out of subsistence living, making possible the standard of living we enjoy today.

Kudos to William for refusing to accept his former lot in life. This guy is a REAL community organizer, he’s got things done without waiting for somebody else to provide a handout. His story should be taught as an example in schools, not just in Africa, but here in the USA as well.

Comment

I have a LOT of respect for tinkerers. I have a friend that was an A & P mechanic for Delta for over 25 years and had a mechanical gift. On one call to Texas I asked him what was new and he told me he had taken his wife and kids for various trips around Texas in his plane. The fact that he HAD a plane was news to me, so I asked him about it. he told me he built it. When I asked him how he learned to build airplanes he just said, "Well, you know how I love to tinker." Him being an airline mechanic I guess building planes was a natural offshoot from his training and interests. we all have our little gifts and its clear that Tom has a gift for mechanics. My hat is off to him, mainly because I DONT.