Crispin, Likewise good to hear from you.
To give an update, I have left the UK to work for All Power Labs in Berkeley, California - developing automation and electronic controls/monitoring for biomass fuelled gensets (10kW- 100kW). It's good to be in the San Francisco Bay Area - which is rapidly becoming a hotbed of Cleantech development. My "pet" project however is to complete the research I started on the spark ignition conversion of the 6hp Lister diesel - and produce a kit of parts that allows it to be started on diesel and then run on woodgas. These I hope can be produced at an affordable price for rural farmers who purchase small diesels for pumping and power generation - I think an Indian Listeroid is $600 to $1000 at the factory gate. This is not dual fuelling, but a means of substitution possibly 95% of all diesel consumption for woodgas. At the same time producing healthy quantities of boichar - which is benefical to small scale farmers. We are going to working alongside Re:char http://www.re-char.com/ who are producing biomass kilns in Kenya, from waste 55gal oil drums, in a 20 foot shipping containerised workshop they call "Shop in a Box" Thanks for you figures relating fuel and beer to the local wages. It makes an interesting metric. Keep up the good work Ken On 15 March 2012 15:35, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <[email protected]>wrote: > Dear Ken**** > > ** ** > > So nice to hear from you after all these years.**** > > *>*Gasoline is $4.59 this week in Berkeley, and $9.20 a US gallon back in > the UK.**** > > I filled up the pickup truck yesterday at the SeTAR Centre: ZAR 740.00. I > could not believe my eyes. That is just about $100 for 66 litres. $5.75 a > gallon. A rural farmer with government support for children might get 1.5 > tanks of fuel a month in income.**** > > I found that one of the reliable ways to tell what a local salary should > be is measured in beer and gasoline. The local cost of 24 beers and 100 > litres of gasoline is often a standard local salary.**** > > Remember that Angola was for a time on the ’beer standard’ where local > currency was useless. Beers can’t be created and have near universal value. > It is also a decent value so it applied to many commodities (3 beers, 2 for > 5 beers). As only the brewery could create a beer, counterfeiting was > impossible. Very practical. The same with gasoline and diesel. I heard > that the WB used to use the gasoline and beer calculation in Uganda as a > way of coping with rampant inflation in the local currency.**** > > Best regards**** > > Crispin in thundery Johannesburg**** > > _______________________________________________ > Stoves mailing list > > to Send a Message to the list, use the email address > [email protected] > > to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page > > http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org > > for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: > http://www.bioenergylists.org/ > > >
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