Week 9

This has been the final week of the project and the group has been working on putting together a final report and presentation. In order to sum up the project, the group has compiled all of the various data and performed cost analyses to create some conclusions. Using the bicycle to generate power has been deemed inefficient as it would not generate enough power to run the lights, satellite internet, and charge batteries, which were the uses preferred by the wildlife center. It would take 15-24 hours a day to generate  enough power for this. It was been estimated that the bicycle might be in use for 4-6 hours each day. This would produce 0.332 to 0.498 kWh of energy every day. It was previously calculated that for every litre of gas, 1.88 kWh of energy are produced. As 1 litre of gas costs $1, $1 provides 5.3 kWh of energy. According to these calculations, using the bicycle for 4-6 hours every day would amount to saving 6.2 to 9.3 cents a day. This amounts to an average of 7.75 cents a day [(6.2+9.3)/2]. Assuming the bicycle is used every day, it would take 15,133.5 days to gain back the cost of the bicycle, which is approximately 41.5 years.

Using the bicycle powered water pump and storing energy in batteries are the recommended course of action for the Bioko wildlife center. 

The water pump would be able to 5-10 gallons of water every minute to an altitude of 30 meters. The water tank at the wildlife center holds 300 gallons, however they do not use the full amount every day. Regardless, it would only take 30-60 minutes each day to completely fill the water tank.

The wildlife center currently uses 5-6 liters of fuel every day. Each liter of fuel creates 1.88 kWh of energy, which amounts to 9.4 to 11.28 kWh a day. According to the energy calculations, the center only uses 3.34 kWh each day, therefore wasting 6.06 to 7.94 kWh each day. By using the batteries to store the energy produced by the generator, the center would be able to save this wasted energy. As the generator is run for 4 hours each day, it uses 1.375 liters of fuel each hour and creates about 2.585 kWh of energy every hour. If the center only needs 3.34 kWh of power each day, this would cost about $1.8 in fuel and the generator would only need to be run for 0.705 hours each day. 
The center could also chose to run the generator for longer, but not every day. This would save the center $3.2-4.2 each day, amounting to $1168-1533 each year.