Kevin Nyango
TechInAfrica – Technology development is now growing rapidly, especially in the energy sector. One of the newest discoveries related to energy is electricity generation using used laptop batteries or has long been unused. The idea of this technology originated from a meeting of three Queensland businessmen. The three men, Nick Kamols, Brad Clair, and Amatus Douw, met in mid-November on the weekend of early 2017 in southern Brisbane. They tried and tested ways to turn used laptop batteries into a source of electricity for remote communities who were less fortunate in enjoying electricity at night.
Where the remote community is known as PowerWells, it is inspired from the Tesla PowerWall home battery. Although inspired by the Tesla PowerWall home batteries, the batteries used in the PowerWells are smaller, cheaper, easier to assemble and all of them consist of e-waste that will not landfill.
These three entrepreneurs and inventors gathered in order to discuss the challenges at the time, namely the lack of electricity supply to remote areas so that the people there could not enjoy electricity at night. Nick Kamols as a city designer is tasked with designing this remote area so that it is easy to flow through electricity. Brad Clair, an electrician, will make Logan’s recycling facility collect electronic waste and find new ways to use it to create power plants from old laptop batteries. While Amatus Douw as the main initiator in creating electricity for this remote village at the same time wished to make this project a business with the name Logan Social Enterprise.
