Design description of the Tangaye Village photovoltaic power system

The engineering design of a stand alone photovoltaic (PV) powered grain mill and water pump for the village of Tangaye, Upper Volta is described. The socioeconomic effects of reducing the time required by women in rural areas for drawing water and grinding grain were studied. The suitability of photovoltaic technology for use in rural areas by people of limited technical training was demonstrated. The PV system consists of a 1.8-kW (peak) solar cell array, 540 ampere hours of battery storage, instrumentation, automatic controls, and a data collection and storage system. The PV system is situated near an improved village well and supplies d.c. power to a grain mill and a water pump. The array is located in a fenced area and the mill, battery, instruments, controls, and data system are in a mill building. A water storage tank is located near the well. The system employs automatic controls which provide battery charge regulation and system over and under voltage protection. This report includes descriptions of the engineering design of the system and of the load that it serves; a discussion of PV array and battery sizing methodology; descriptions of the mechanical and electrical designs including the array, battery, controls, and instrumentation; and a discussion of the safety features. The system became operational on March 1, 1979

Operational performance of the photovoltaic-powered grain mill and water pump at Tangaye, Upper Volta

The first two years of operation of a stand alone photovoltaic (PV) power system for the village of Tangaye, Upper Volta in West Africa are described. The purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate that PV systems could provide reliable electrical power for multiple use applications in remote areas where local technical expertise is limited. The 1.8 kW (peak) power system supplies 120-V (d.c.) electrical power to operate a grain mill, a water pump, and mill building lights for the village. The system was initially sized to pump a part of the village water requirements from an existing improved well, and to meet a portion of the village grain grinding requirements. The data, observations, experiences, and conclusions developed during the first two years of operation are discussed. Reports of tests of the mills used in the project are included

Tunisia Renewable Energy Project systems description report

In 1979, the Agency for International Development (AID) initiated a renewable energy project with the Government of Tunisia to develop an institutional capability to plan and institute renewable energy technologies in a rural area. The specific objective of the district energy applications subproject was to demonstrate solar and wind energy systems in a rural village setting. The NASA Lewis Research Center was asked by the AID Near East Bureau to manage and implement this subproject. This report describes the project and gives detailed desciptions of the various systems

Potential Effects of Industrial Air Pollution and Wood-Product Supply and Demand, and Structure of the Wood-Products Industry, in Poland

This study aimed to determine potential changes in the production structure of the wood-processing industry up to 2020, resulting from unfavorable impact of industrial pollutants upon forests in Poland. The paper consists of four chapters. In the first section, forecasts of consumer demand for forest products, based on patterns of actual demand, are presented. The structure of industrial demand for wood assortments, and the degree to which it is met, are the topics of the second chapter. In the third chapter, we present forecasts of the possibilities of wood-raw-material consumption by industry with regard to the unfavorable impact of industrial pollution. The last chapter contains forecasts of production regarding foreseen changes in the structure of the wood-processing industry, taking into account qualitative changes in wood raw-material and expected changes in techniques and technology. Our results show that, up to 2020, negative effects of industrial pollutants on forests will have a significant influence on the degree of meeting consumer demands for wood products

Orbital and physical parameters of eclipsing binaries from the ASAS catalogue -- III. Two new low-mass systems with rapidly evolving spots

We present the results of our spectroscopic and photometric analysis of two newly discovered low-mass detached eclipsing binaries found in the All-Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) catalogue: ASAS J093814-0104.4 and ASAS J212954-5620.1. Using the GIRAFFE instrument on the 1.9-m Radcliffe telescope at SAAO and the UCLES spectrograph on the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope, we obtained high-resolution spectra of both objects and derived their radial velocities (RVs) at various orbital phases. The RVs of both objects were measured with the TODCOR technique using synthetic template spectra as references. We also obtained V and I band photometry using the 1.0-m Elizabeth telescope at SAAO and the 0.4-m PROMPT instruments located at the CTIO. The orbital and physical parameters of the systems were derived with PHOEBE and JKTEBOP codes. We compared our results with several sets of widely-used isochrones. Our multi-epoch photometric observations demonstrate that both objects show significant out-of-eclipse modulations, which vary in time. We believe that this effect is caused by stellar spots, which evolve on time scales of tens of days. For this reason, we constructed our models on the basis of photometric observations spanning short time scales (less than a month). Our modeling indicates that (1) ASAS-09 is a main sequence active system with nearly-twin components with masses of M1 = 0.771(33) Msun, M2 = 0.768(21) Msun and radii of R1 = 0.772(12) Rsun and R2 = 0.769(13) Rsun. (2) ASAS-21 is a main sequence active binary with component masses of M1 = 0.833(17) Msun, M2 = 0.703(13) Msun and radii of R1 = 0.845(12) Rsun and R2 = 0.718(17) Rsun. Both systems confirm the characteristic of active low-mass stars, for which the observed radii are larger and the temperatures lower than predicted by evolutionary models. Other parameters agree within errors with the models of main sequence stars.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables, to appear in A&