Read the full story originally published by Thayer School of Engineering News.
Dartmouth engineering students Joseph Anthony ’12 and Theodore Sumers ’12 are among the 45 college teams awarded grants by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for Phase I of its People, Prosperity and the Planet annual student design competition. Each grant, totaling up to $15,000 per team, is applied toward designing and developing sustainable technologies to help protect people’s health and the environment while promoting economic development.
The Dartmouth team project—called “Small-Scale Hydropower Generation And Distribution System For Rural Electrification”—states two main goals: “1) implement a hydropower system in Rugote, Rwanda, that transmits power to the village center; and 2) establish a battery box-based distribution model, in partnership with community members, that generates a profit that is invested back into the system.”
The project is an extension of Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering’s (DHE) ongoing effort to implement pico-scale hydropower systems in rural Rwanda. DHE has already successfully installed two small (less than 1 kW) hydropower sites there and have identified a third site at Rugote where they plan to scale their system up to generate 3-5kW of power and install a transmission system that will bring electricity to the heart of the village. Photos from DHE’s efforts in Rwanda can be viewed here.
