[Stoves] 5 USD per this armful sized bundle of fuelwood of softpine fuelwood

[Ken Boak]

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 <crispinpigott at gmail.com>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****
>
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