Manifesto: Direct Solar Economy
Pathway toward a world free of fossil
fuel dependence.
In this short book, we have compiled our years of experience and we present our vision to participate to solve the
climate change crisis.
The "Direct Solar Economy" presents our vision of a global solar economy to empower people locally and
create wealth with a clean technology. The theory is complementary to the hardware and the software we’ve created.
With you, we want to see this solar seed grow in places around the world.
MORE ABOUT
Our Model
Breaking energy poverty, providing reliable power sources.
In countries where incomes are low, fuel is expensive and electricity grids are missing or unstable, energy poverty creates a vicious cycle of deforestation, pollution, ill-health and low-income outcomes.
Energy is the foundation of all activity, and by creating technology that is cost-effective, adds value to products, outputs at commercial scales, and can be maintained by end-users or local artisans — using free and clean solar energy — it’s possible to radically increase income and well-being while reversing deforestation and increasing resilience to economic and environmental disruptions.
The Poverty Cycle
Breaking the Poverty Cycle
Our Strategy
Real solutions must be scalable.
Our environmental and social problems are severe and getting worse. Real solutions must be scalable.
How to scale is the heart of the problem. The first step for us is developing the expertise and algorythms for deep optimization of solar technology for the actual context people are living in.
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.