Luxtreks Presentations – October 2002

 

 

When the Kyoto agreement is in everyone’s mind it is satisfying to find an approach to reducing energy demands. The Luxtreks lighting system was designed to be efficient and to take advantage of the latest technology to achieve the best possible results. In his review at the Luxtreks presentation ceremony Anthony Harckham said that “With the system we installed in Quirembaya (Bolivia) we were able to provide lighting for 30 plus homes, whilst requiring only two 53 watt solar panels.” Each home has two lights, one in the kitchen and one in the living area.

 

Dr. Grant McGibney was the designer of the circuit that took the 12 volt output and converted it to drive the light emitting diodes(LEDs) used for lighting. Faith Harckham presented him with one of her prints to thank him for the great help that he had given the undertaking. Thanks in part to his circuit design the cost of lighting homes had been kept to $150 Canadian per home, of which a substantial part was shipping costs.

 

Luxtreks are now actively looking for a partner in Bolivia who can build the lights and arrange for the direct importation of batteries, thus reducing costs further.

 

Kevin Doherty of Pangaea Manufacturing Inc. was also presented with a print for his valuable help in getting the printed circuit boards built. The weight of the boards created some tricky problems to ensure that they passed through the soldering system successfully. It was noted that only one board had failed in the build of 250 which is an extremely high success rate.

 

Kevin was also presented with a print for Richard Tanguay, also of Pangaea Manufacturing Inc. who unfortunately could not be present on the occasion. Richard had generously volunteered the use of Pangaea’s facilities to undertake the build.

 

The ceremony was held at the TRLabs Boardroom in the Calgary Technologies Inc. facility. It provided the opportunity for the people who had gone to Bolivia to perform the installation work to meet again and show their pictures. It also allowed those who have similar interests to see the progress that had been made in providing economical and environmentally friendly lighting.

 

The intention is to perform additional installations in Guatemala and Ladakh, as well as revisiting Bolivia. Although the current lighting system works well, is extremely robust and easy to install further improvements will be undertaken to maintain the system with current technology and to further reduce the costs.

 

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