OLPC to work on Cow-powered Sources in India
Nonprofit group, One Laptop Per Child Foundation has started its OLPC project for poor children. Incidentally, India has a large number of children in its population. Other than that, there are lot of places in India, specially rural areas where electricity is an issue of concern. Indian villages are well-known for the usage of natural resources for their day-today-activities.
The OLPC Foundation has announced a plan to use unconventional power sources such as cow power for the OLPC laptop. Currently, the team is experimenting with the cow-powered generator to keep the laptops charged, in a village near Mumbai. As the main purpose of this project is to deliver a low-cost energy source, and natural resources are the best example.
According to sources, the team is working on a system of belts and pulleys to drive a dynamo taken from an old Fiat, by using cows or other cattle.
OLPC’s Arjun Sarwal mentioned, “The group considered using solar energy but sunlight near Mumbai was not “consistently strong.” There was not enough wind or running water nearby to use these as sources of power, and the cost of running a gas-powered motor was too high. But the village had an abundance of cattle that were being used in the fields. So we decided to design something around that.”
Recently, it was reported that the OLPC laptop will soon run on Microsoft’s Windows Software.
Much of rural India strongly concentrate on utilization of natural power sources and I think this surely is one of the best ways to keep the laptop charged when helping the village kids learn a lot from the OLPC Xo laptop.
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