Early Concept

Core Concept

Bali is an island that has 636 rural villages, many of which are located in coastal areas. Some of those villages still don’t have proper access to electricity - so they tend to utilise diesel gen-sets to power their day to day lives. Hencewhy, making the gen-set modular for ease of transport and frugal so that it can be adopted - are important parameter. Because fuel cells comes in DC and most appliances are in AC, there needs to be a converter.

Mechanism

I found this video of someone using Hydrogen to power their Chainsaw

A study and prototype has also been done by Dr. Billy Wu of Imperial College London. They prototyped a Hydrogen Power Generator.

From his study, he mentioned that the hydrogen fuel cell will require ancillary components called the “balance of plant”.

Basically I want to build something similar but more compact, and allows room for modularity in the design.

Electronic Component

This is something that I still need to figure out. Dr Billy Wu’s study mentioned of three different configurations. In his prototype he did the optimum configuration (the third one).

I think making the optimum configuration is tricky especially since I am a beginner in electronics. I think I will try the 1st Option (pure fuel cell system) and probably will require electronic components closer to what was shown in the Chainsaw video. Making it smaller, more compact is already a huge ambition.

Packaging

Modularity and Frugality will play into the design of the packaging. I am highly inspired by Teenage Engineering’s design for the packaging of the Gen-Set

Additional Component of the Project (Still maybe)

A display to show how much energy is being used. Here is the render