SEAGATE GLOBAL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT INFRASTRUCTURE INITIATIVES

Seagate Global promotes prosperity to people and the planet by providing access to markets, electricity, safe drinking water, low cost housing, and community development in rural areas.  Long term, the best path out of poverty is education.  Short-term empowerment includes microfinance and being connected to the global economy.  Our projects are not “giveaways” because we believe that only if the village invests its own money, sweat, and time will the people regard the installation of water treatment and off-grid electrical power as theirs.  Then and only then will they become valued possessions and treated with attention and care.

Community development at the local level encourages the three ideal elements of a prosperous society:  self-reliant families, effective institutions of civil society and good government that allows families to enjoy the fruits of their labors, and a legal framework under which businesses can operate freely.  In a society governed by rule of law, property is protected and people are encouraged to improve it.  Firms can make long-term commitments to workers, customers, and investors.

Malfunctioning economies are characterized by tribalism, cronyism, corruption, insecure property rights, and lack of knowledge and skills, and some suffer the “resource curse” in which resource wealth is easily stolen rather than earned.  Most foreign aid, because it is unearned, can be a similar curse.  When it is channeled through the recipient government, it gives the leaders an incentive to remain in power and control the wealth represented by the aid and exclude others from power.  Unearned income undermines the work ethic and the public service ethic by rewarding those skilled at taking things rather than those skilled at creating or improving things, making corruption relatively easy and profitable.

Electrifying With Solar and Wind

Solar has many attractive features, such as having no moving parts so there is nothing to wear out; with plenty of sunlight it is virtually free after installation.  Since each building becomes its own electrical producer, it eliminates much of the capital costs inherent in building a centralized power plant, which include buying land, doing site work, digging lots of holes, pouring lots of concrete, digging trenches, burying conduits, building foundations and support structures, buying a huge inverter to change the photovoltaic-generated DC current to AC, constructing a building in which the inverted is placed, purchasing switch gear and switch yard and transformers and long distance transmission lines.  None of these outlays in time, money or effort are necessary if the solar modules are placed on the building where the electricity will be used.  The roof is already there, as are electrical connections, and you don’t lose 30% or more electricity on long-distance transmission.  The major problem is theft since the solar modules are easy to use and thieves know their worth.

Our plan is simple:  Install one system per village and let the people see that the system works.

With financing, the technology would be affordable to many.  There are two financing models that have been used successfully to purchase the equipment:

1. Establish a revolving fund, purchase the initial installation, collect the money that would have been spent on using a diesel generator and use that money to buy a second unit and then keep using the money collected to buy additional systems. The SELF model involves collecting a $100 down payment and $10 per month for each unit.
2. Sell photovoltaic service where an investor-owned utility could collect a monthly fee for providing reliable solar electricity, including wiring and providing light bulbs. Customers get a full service commitment.  Consumers keep their capital, so there is no risk for them, and will stop payment if service is poor and will take good care of the system since the company will remove the power source in the case of non-payment or misuse. After getting electricity no one wants to lose it, so this is a strong incentive. Heavy density in a community eases the cost of collections and upkeep (SELCO model).

In addition to being used for residential electricity and public services (e.g. to power computers in schools and refrigerators in clinics), solar energy can also be used for water pumps, creating the marriage of the century – uniting water and the sun leaves no chance of divorce.

Just like all of our community development projects, villager participation in the drilling and construction of the reservoir is mandatory.  The village needs to support the water treatment system and the technical team that supervises the construction by making sure that straight shafts are dug, that the village designs a system for managing the water distribution and collecting money to cover lease payments and maintenance costs, providing non-technical upkeep of the equipment (keeping the modules and site clean) and securing the area to protect the pump and wiring against theft. The investor group buys high quality pump equipment that is worth the price because its reliability reduces service maintenance costs.  For example, the Grundfos pump does not have a shaft, the wiring is protected with flexible plastic that connects the inverter to the immersed motor, and the pump is made of stainless steel and is self-lubricating.  Our specs call for heavy duty plastic pipe, which will prevent corrosion, and tempered glass panels to protect the solar cells.

More water means more bricks and thus larger huts for villagers. More water also makes possible the creation of small gardens to grow produce for sale in neighboring markets, the profits of which can pay for clothes, radios, bicycles, and other modern goods.  We recommend manual pumps alongside the solar pumps, for cloudy days and in case the solar pump breaks down.  Since these are used only in emergencies they last longer.

Where the wind blows constantly and at the right speed, wind turbines provide clean, sustainable energy that (after the capital costs are recovered) are nearly as cheap to operate as solar.  However, they require additional land as well as transmission, and usable sites are not as abundant as those usable for solar power.

WATER DISTRIBUTION AND TREATMENT

A burgeoning global demand for safe drinking water, environmentally sustainable water use, and industrial process improvement will provide high return investments in what is already the third largest industry in the world.  Water will be the resource that defines the 21^st century as global population adjusts to the linkages between human health, economic development, and resource sustainability.  There is no substitute for water since many biochemical reactions can occur only in aqueous solution, water enables solvent nutrients to be carried to living organisms.  In addition water is the universal solvent.   

Over 1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and over 2.5 billion have no proper means of sanitation.  More than half of all hospital beds are filled with people suffering from waterborne and water-related diseases.  Lack of water and sanitation services kills more than 4,500 children each day.  More than 10 million person years are wasted by women and children carrying water from distant sources.  Water diseases caused by ingestion of water contaminated by human or animal waste containing pathogenic bacteria or viruses include cholera, typhoid, amoebic and bacillary dysentery, scabies, trachoma, parasites, and insects that breed in water include dengue, malaria, and others.

Managing water resources is different that managing wastewater. Water management consists of all activities related to human consumption (e.g. converting source water to potable water), as opposed to activities concerning wastewater, which is the water discharged subsequent to its intended use. Treatment methods include the use of chemicals/resins, filtration by membrane separation, and disinfection alternatives such as ultraviolet and ozone technology, desalination, and decentralized point-of-use applications. Analytical is lab testing to detect contaminates and metering, monitoring, measuring and testing.  Infrastructure is the construction, replacement, repair, and rehabilitation of water distribution systems, and wastewater systems including pipelines, storage, pumps, valves and flow control.  The basic types of pipe include steel, concrete, ductile iron, and polyvinyl chloride with different corrosion and strength characteristics. For example, DI is stronger but PVC is corrosion-free. The rehabilitation of pipes that have burst is a growing area. In addition to pipelines, Seagate supplies a line of pumps that add energy to water for raising elevation and increase pressure (booster). There are two basic types:  displacement (rotary and reciprocating) and centrifugal (rotating impeller). Stainless steel and thermoplastic have replaced cast iron.

Stainless steel and thermoplastic have replaced cast iron.

Treatment can be centralized or decentralized to the village level using bioreactors for cross-flow filtration which reject the biomass and allow sludge-free water to pass through.  Also, rooftop reservoirs harvest rainwater for non-potable applications.  Desalination through electro dialysis and membrane processes such as reverse osmosis is becoming economically feasible.

ACCESS TO GLOBAL MARKETS

The transportation network in rural areas consists of dirt roads that become nearly impassible during the rainy seasons.  Seagate Global is the distributor of EcoRoads, an enzyme-based product that mixes with the local dirt to form a cement-like surface with an expected life of more than 20 years.  The product has been certified in the U.S., Panama, and Russia, and we are undergoing certification in China and the ASEAN nations.

The best practice application involves using EcoRoads as a stabilization product that increases the strength, density, and durability of the base and then covering the road with water-repellant material to keep the surface free from potholes and rutting. The process is easy to apply and requires no special equipment, only a sprayer truck and grader with teeth to mix the soil and enzyme.  Most of the cost savings comes from the reduction of the base course that requires less aggregate rock, reduction of the compaction effort and improvement of the soil workability while lubricating the soil particles.  Key applications include rural road building, repair and maintenance, and building of roads for mining, timber, solar, hydro and wind projects and military use.

In addition to enzyme-based road building, Seagate has the license for ECObric, which allows for quickly built, durable housing without expensive cement stabilizations, kiln firing, or transportation costs.  Benefits include cost and time savings of 25% or more and carbon reduction of more than 50%, compared to other building methods.  The Stabilized Earth Block (which is much stronger than cement, at 1160 psi to cement’s 996 psi) can be mixed, compacted, and cured in open air, all on site in less than one week, and can be formed into bricks of any size and shape, bricks which can be easily waterproofed.