Updates from Nepal's Pilot Schools

[Bryan Berry]

25-30 --> ah yes, Ram wrote that and he knows better than I do
On Sun, 2008-03-09 at 05:07 -0700, david at lang.hm wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Mar 2008, Bryan Berry wrote:
> 
> > David, good idea.
> >
> > there are only about 6 light bulbs at the Bishwamitra (smaller school)
> > and less than 5 at Bashuki the larger school.
> 
> that may not be enough to matter. on one of the wiki pages it mentioned 
> 25-30 as a number. switching to LED's will save about 90% of the power 
> that the bulbs currently use (plus they will last essentially forever)
> 
> > I will have to ask Ram (our power guy) about what's available on the
> > local market.
> 
> LED lights are not readily available in the local market even in the US, 
> they tend to be internet orders only
> 
> > Regards to getting some for free, it would be great if you could put us
> > in contact w/ someone to donate them. In my experience it can be very
> > expensive time-wise to seek donations from companies w/out an existing
> > personal connection. Sometimes it just cheaper to buy something than to
> > spend the time trying to get a donation. That said, a strong personal
> > connection can make it very easy to get a donation.
> 
> I don't have any personal contacts.
> 
> David Lang
> 
> > On Sun, 2008-03-09 at 04:26 -0700, david at lang.hm wrote:
> >> On Sun, 9 Mar 2008, Bryan Berry wrote:
> >>
> >>> Sulochan Acharya and I are keeping journals of Nepal's pilot schools on
> >>> the wiki and the OLE Nepal blog.
> >>>
> >>> http://blog.olenepal.org/
> >>>
> >>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bashuki_Journal
> >>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bishwamitra_Journal
> >>>
> >>> We will do our best to keep updating the wiki pages.
> >>>
> >>> We hope that reporting this info will be helpful to other pilot sites
> >>> and to the larger OLPC community.
> >>
> >> thanks for posting this info.
> >>
> >> one thing that struck me as i was reading your write-ups was about the
> >> power problems. both schools have very limited power, one of the schools
> >> mentioned the power consumption of the light bulbs as part of the
> >> calculation. Assuming that they schools are useing conventional light
> >> bulbs, they could probably save more power than the laptops need to charge
> >> by switching to a high-efficiancy bulb.
> >>
> >> given the unreliable power, florecent bulbs are probably not a reasonable
> >> option, but (assuming theft is not too big a factor) LED bulbs would last
> >> and save the power needed to run the other equipment.
> >>
> >> equipping a school with such bulbs is not cheap (a few thousand dollars
> >> per school), but there may be charities around who could fund this. I'm
> >> willing to bet that nobody has ever asked them to fund anything like this.
> >>
> >> you may be able to get some donations from the manufacturers as well.
> >>
> >> David Lang
> >
> >