In some locations labour costs are high and lot’s of optimization is needed to reduce operating costs. In other places labour costs are low and skills and infrastructure are less developed; and therefore optimization in these contexts means making technology that is much less automated and expensive, easy to deliver and install and can be maintained locally, and providing energy scales and temperatures that produce real value for a local business and entrepreneurs.

Return on one’s effort and investment is just as important in low-income areas as in high-income areas, and since prices are also low for products, there must be sufficient scale of production. All of our analysis starts and ends with Return on Investment for the client or end-user.

Less-automation does not mean a technology must be less thermally-efficient or only have tiny production scales. An artisan baker in Kenya must bake as many goods as an artisan baker in France to stay in business. There is no real limit to the solar technology that can be made based on manual tracking. However, desining such solutions requires the same engineering methods and code as we use for high-precision development for industrial clients.

After optimizing a technology using state-of-the art numerical methods, CAD simulation and then testing it in real conditions in actual small business context (a step we have completed), the next step is to work with as many people and organizations as possible. It is our belief that solving global problems requires global cooperation.

We are currently building a network of business, organizations, entrepreneurs, industry, government and impact people of all sorts that’s needed to build the programs that can realistically overcome the barriers to massive exponential growth of solar thermal technology. Join us!

You can also read the first version of our manifesto, it’s here and it’s free.