People were literally queuing out of the door (see photo above) to see the new technology at three of our SmartSIP+ demo sites which officially opened across Bangladesh last week!
What a whirlwind it was – workshops with Bangladesh and UK government representatives, UN organisations and NGOs, mixed in with site visits and further workshops with farmers and their families.
The challenge
The Bangladesh government wants to replace the 1.2m diesel irrigation pumps that cause around 5% of the country’s pollution. Fuel is a significant cost to the farmers, and around 100 million people in Bangladesh rely on farming for their income. Solar power is clean sustainable energy, and Bangladesh has an abundance of sunlight, whereas it imports all its fule. However, solar powered systems need way more capital outlay than the vast majority of farmers can manage, so government subsidy is necessary. But is it a wise investment?
In peak months irrigation is required virtually all day, but for much of the year water is only pumped for a couple of hours per day, so there is plenty of surplus energy with a solar powered system. How might this be used effectively to improve the business case?
The Smart SIP+ project
The SmartSIP+ research project explores the many ways farming families could use the surplus solar energy, and the viability of a variety of potential business models. It is co-lead by Bangladesh Agricultural University and Birmingham City University, and funded through the UKRI Ayrton Challenge programme. You can read all about it at https://smartsipplus.org/
We have 5 demonstration sites in different farming communities across the country, each with a solar irrigation pump (SIP) and then a variety of other uses for the surplus electricity:
- Cold storage to reduce crop wastage / extend life of the produce.
- Water sanitation – nearly all groundwater in Bangladesh contains dangerous levels of arsenic which affects child development, accumulates in peoples bodies, causing intense pain and shortening lives. Providing clean water in rural areas is vital.
- A variety of innovative electric farming machines to help with the harvest and post-harvest production.
An important part of the research is to understand which of these initiatives are popular with the farmers and their families, which are ignored, which are reliable, which are more efficient, and so on.
This is where Thingitude comes in – working with the professors and PhD students to create a comprehensive data capture system and suite of sensors that will provide objective data for each initiative.
The data is fed from each site into a cloud-based Digital Twin, which will be used by the academics to study the performance of each site and each initiative.
One of the technical challenges is that although there is an internet connection to each site, availability can be intermittent, so the site needs to be able to operate even when there is no internet, and of course we don’t want to lose any data during these times either. The solution is rather neat, but no spoilers from me – watch out for the papers to be published in the coming months.
…and here’s a bright young student observing me testing a LoRaWAN gateway in temperatures that far exceeded my optimum operating range (but well within spec for the kit).
Two examples
I just wanted to share two examples of the kind of ideas the project is experimenting with. Firstly – prolonging the life of crops with cold storage. In the north of the country project partners Bright Green Energy Foundation have installed a cold storage facility which can hold 5 tons of produce.
At the BAU, students have built an ethylene sensor. Ethylene is a gas given off by fruit such as bananas as they ripen.
Using the cold storage combined with the sensors, farmers should be able to prolong the saleable life of their products. If they can extend the sales period then they should earn a higher price for their goods.
What next?
We are half-way through a 3-year project, and momentum is on our side. There is a lot of work left to do, but as we start producing useful data the emphasis of the work will shift towards analysis and experimentation and gaining insights into what really works for the farmers and their families.
Next month the BAU team are leaving their rainy season and coming over to Birmingham, so it will be great to meet up and share the unpredictable delights of a British summer.