A man without his fridge

Well Mike, as you don't keep your own blog, I'll keep one for you...

Things haven't gone completely to plan in the latest developments in Mike's solar powered fridge project. After returning to the U.K. for a month to continue testing and tweaking the prototype, Mike came across some small print in the published output figures thingys of the solar panels. It turns out they don't quite produce the same amount of power output under the conditions present in Honduras that he thought they did (apparently its too hot and there's too much sun in Honduras). This apparently makes the whole design unfeasible.

This is a big shame as Mike's has been working on this for more than 3 years, and got to the point of a working prototype, and setting up a business plan in Honduras, - and to have it finally fall apart now is such bad luck.

But this hasn't stopped Mike. Like Kylie Manogue or Madonna, Mike has reinvented himself (not the fridge), and acquired a job in Peru (as you do), working for a charity called Practical Action developing 'small hydro stations' (whatever they are).

A man and a fridge

Mike has been on about this solar powered fridge idea for quite a while now - a few years at least. Friends around him have always listened with interest and expressed excitement about the idea, but even after he made a market research trip to Kenya last year, maybe none of us ever thought it would actually happen - that he'd actually have the balls to go ahead and do it.... Well he's got the balls, and he's doing it.

Mike's a product design graduate from the now prestigious Aston University. He designed a community sized solar powered fridge as part of his degree course with the altruistic if not ambitious aim of saving all the poor people in the world. The idea is that poor remote communities in tropical countries don't have money, electricity, or air conditioned milk trucks, but they do have cows and lots of sun. So give them a big solar powered fridge and they can store lots of milk, for longer, allowing them to sell more at markets and at a higher quality and drink more themselves. The fridge unit can also have other stuff plugged into it, utilising all of the energy available from the solar panels.

The Remote Community Refrigerator prototype

The only remaining problem was making the business model work. Poor remote communities don't have several thousand dollars to invest in a solar powered fridge, let alone the foresight to appreciate the concept of 'investment'. So not being a billionaire philanthropist, Mike had a few gaps in the figures.

Mike is now settled in Siguatepeque, a mountain town in Honduras, where he's trying to get his Remote Community Refrigerator (RCR) business off the ground. The latest break through has come from the main milk distributor for Honduras - Sula. They collect milk via pickup trucks from small independent farmers around the country, and then process and distribute it through a number of regional processing plants before sending it out to the shops. The problem they have is that by the time their pickups arrive at the farms to collect the milk, its already been sitting there in the sun for a good few hours, as a result, they end up selling low quality milk (milk is given some kind of quality grading apparently). So they are looking for an appropriate solution to allow them to process and deliver better milk.

Mike has got all the details worked out to build the fridges in Honduras; importing components from Canada, Italy, Spain and sourcing the timber from a locally sustainable (of course) supplier. The prototype has already been built in the UK, and is currently being tested and tweaked. The only thing left to do is rent out a workshop, place the component orders, buy a pickup truck to deliver the thing, oh and persuade the Honduran milk company they want to buy the fridges.

Oh and Mike is now engaged to his Brasilian girlfriend Solange, with the wedding in Brasil in January! Congratulations. And me invited as the best man.

Mike working out the finer points of his fridge design with Sol

Watch www.native-ambition.com in the future for news on Mike's quest.