VillageTech
Solar Power for School PC
Solar Power Mini-PV
Solar Powered OLPC
Solar Power Exhibit
Google Project 10^100
Appropriate Tech Overview
Solar Powered OLPC "$100 Laptop"

Our NGO, AT SIGs & African Imports Store all chipped in & managed to get several of MIT's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) "XO" laptops, through OLPC's annual "Give 1, Get 1 (G1G1)" program, which machines were slated for the computer lab in the primary school of our on-going school rebuilding & computer lab project in the village Ikot Usen, in Akwa Ibom State in southeastern Nigeria. Though the "Give 1" machines shipped with various mechanical charging devices, the "Get 1"s we received did not, offering instead only AC adapters, which wouldn't work, as the village has no electricity. So, I was charged with coming up with a viable alternative, which I did, by obtaining a portable, folding 25 watt, 1.5 amp solar panel, & creating a custom power cable, with special polarity end tips from Jameco Electronics & with help from the Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC) Computer Refurbishing Center (which recently provided us with 2 dozen of their refurbished desktop PCs for our school project in Nigeria)  in-house custom cable guy, My Computer Guy to handle the soldering & shrink-wrap operations. Just prior to shipping the laptops to Nigeria, we put on a fundraiser in San Francisco called "SolPower", for which I was asked to prepare a "Science Fair Project like" exhibit showcasing the range & use of Solar Power in our various current & future anticipated village projects - at the event I had the solar powered OLPCs up-&-running, & was impressed at how quickly kids got the hang of operating the never-before-seen system.




 
The brochure on our OLPC for Nigerian village school project

 
Solar Powered OLPC



Closeup of the OLPC laptop & folding solar panel