Idea 419 of 500. Cluster 21: Energy, water and waste at small scale
Battery-storage services for the guesthouses
The mechanism, from the book
The sun shines on every roof and the island imports its fuel.
Every idea in cluster 21 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Find the guesthouse owners on one stretch of coast or hill road and ask how many hours they lose power each week, what a blackout costs them in refunds or generator fuel, and whether guests have complained. Offer to install a battery for a monthly service fee, with the first month free if it fails to cover an outage. The proof is a signed service agreement from the owner who complains most.
- Who pays first
- A guesthouse owner who pays for generator fuel and loses bookings to bad reviews after blackouts, and would rather pay a fixed monthly fee.
- What leaves today
- Generators burn imported fuel and outages cost bookings; stored power, charged from the sun, keeps both the fuel money and the guest's goodwill on the island.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. FourteenThe List
Energy: first, stop importing it
More from cluster 21
- 411Rooftop solar leasing for households, paid from the electricity bill
- 412Solar-powered cold rooms for the fishing harbours and the farms
- 413Biogas plants for the dairy and pig farms, with the gas sold locally
- 414Rainwater-harvesting installation for the dry-zone villages and the hotels
- 415Waste-collection and recycling businesses in the tourist towns, paid by the businesses they serve
- 416Composting of hotel and market waste into a branded soil product
Idea 419 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.