1. Aakash Balaji<br />Susmith Susthankar<br />Kevin Kubis<br />Eco – Challenge Research<br />Country/Geographic Region: Our location is a country with high population, low space, and or unreliable access to power. Some examples include India and China. China and India are the two most heavily populated countries in the world and the huge, overgrowing population is stressing the resources of their nations. Since our solution involves hydroelectricity the demographic in which our product will be used is near a source of running water such as India’s Ganges River or China’s extensive Yangtze River. The Ganges River is severely diminished in the winter and sometime floods during the rainy season so the best time to use our generator would be summer. Also the Ganges is a very large river and generator can be built around a multitude of places. <br />Next we uncovered some details about China’s Yangtze River. It is the third longest river in the world and passes through three gorges, which occupy 129 km of the river’s length. This information is important because it means we would not be able to build in those areas due to the mountainous terrain. But we would still have locations along 6171 km. <br />https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html July, 2010<br />Need:<br />Many rural areas in these countries don’t have power. Also power outages are common in these nations’ cities and towns. In addition these nations lack renewable sources of energy. Our product would create a new source of renewable energy, improve these conditions by making power more abundant and accessible in more areas, and decrease dependence on nonrenewable resources. Through these facts we understood our generator has to be made of abundant/renewable resources, provide at least enough energy for small towns, and can be built by average people. Fortunately 61% of people in India and 91.6% in China attend a minimum of 10 years of school and since the population of India and China is 1,173,108,018 and 1,330,141,295 respectively 1,934,005,317 people in India and China collectively are able to use our product.<br />http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-03-10-3379352362_x.htm May 10, 2008<br />http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/hardware/Power-outage-halts-Toshibas-chip-plant/articleshow/7071346.cms Dec. 9, 2010<br />https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html<br />Current Viable Solutions to this problem are existent but are lacking. According to India’s Ministry of New and Renewable energy, the government agency that is in charge of supplying India with renewable energy, only about achieving about 62% of their total energy goals and only about 68% of their hydroelectric goals. Our product when built on the Ganges River would aid their cause and help the people without power. <br />http://www.mnre.gov.in/ 2010<br />China is the world’s 2nd largest consumer of energy, after the U.S., and has vast amounts of resources. China uses coal for thermal energy which causes a massive amount of pollution. China uses coal as its primary resource because coal is abundant on the North side of China. The second resource China possesses in abundance is a huge hydroelectric resource. Currently China’s energy producers are using only about 25% to 30% of the hydroelectric resources available. This is great because this means our product will have more than just the Yangtze River to use. In addition the Chinese government is currently investing heavily into putting untapped hydroelectric resources to use. This means not only would we receive cooperation from the Chinese government but funding as well.<br />http://www.sgcc.com.cn/ywlm/pnews/91705.shtml 2011<br />Calculations: The problem of lack of renewable energy requires that our group builds a efficient, eco – friendly generator. Through our research we discovered that a Christmas light bulb, which will be used in our small scale model, consumes around .5-1 watt of electricity. Since our hydroelectric generator will generate power in relation to the speed of the water we needed to find this relation. We discovered the formula used by hydroelectric power plants to generate power. It is:<br />P = ρhrgk<br />P is Power in watts,<br />ρ is the density of water (~1000 kg/m3),<br />h is height in meters,<br />r is flow rate in cubic meters per second,<br />g is acceleration due to gravity of 9.8 m/s2,<br />k is a coefficient of efficiency ranging from 0 to 1. Efficiency is often higher (that is, closer to 1) with larger and more modern turbines.<br />We did a sample calculation of how much power we could generate at a place called Gangotri along the Ganges River where the speed of the river is around 45 km/h and the average height of the river is 52 meters. We found we could generate about 35, 752.85 watts of electricity with a tube diameter of 4 feet and .25 efficiency. Next we researched wind energy and its aspects. We learned that wind energy is made by transforming kinetic energy into electrical energy. We also found that wind turbines take up a lot of space and our locations don’t have a lot of space. http://www.holidayleds.com/articles/how_calculate_energy_savings_led_christmas_lights June 16, 2008<br />Donald G. Fink and H. Wayne Beaty, Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers, Eleventh Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1978<br />We needed to research how electricity is created, how it is transferred, what are some common ways people generate it, and what resources are renewable. Our research showed us electricity is conducted when a flow of electrons is created and is transferred through the use of conductors such as copper wire. It also outlined for us that our prime goal was to generate an electromagnetic field. We saw examples of people generating electricity through the use of magnets, turbines, and paddles. We also discovered that electricity is always a secondary source of energy and a primary source was always needed. Some renewable primary sources we considered include wind, magnetic force, and hydroelectricity. We also need to look up certain units of measurements crucial to understanding this project such as flow rate and watts. Flow rate is the amount of a liquid flowing through a certain space at a given time and watts is a measurement of power.<br />http://www.electricityforum.com/how-is-electricity-generated.html<br />http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=electricity_home-basics<br />http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=flow%20rate<br />The conclusion we arrived at after this research is that now is the right time to create hydroelectric power. Also we came to better understand of how electricity works and the current state of the nations we researched. <br />