Capping over a year of work, four all-weather rooms built into shipping containers have been assembled, tested, packed and placed on a ship in Oakland bound for Kellé, Niger.  Pete Retondo Architecture donated the design and documentation, totaling 14 sheets of detailed drawings, and helped with commissioning, testing and modification prior to shipping.

The design started out as just two rooms, but it was designed for “extensibility,” and before we were done it had already expanded to four with 108 solar panels rack-mounted on a canopy that shades the rooms and keeps them up out of harm’s way.  One entire container is devoted to the photovoltaic system equipment (partially donated by Outback Systems), including about 17,000 pounds of closed cell batteries.  Each cell is 2 volts and weighs about 350 pounds.  Eight inverters convert the DC power stored in the batteries to AC power, which is used to run the facility.  A large chunk of power goes to the mini-split air conditioning system (donated by Lennox), which consists of four outdoor heat pumps that can supply chilled or heated refrigerant to fancoil units inside each room.  You can see these units in some of the photos below.  This system was designed to maintain indoor temperatures around 80 degrees F, even when the temperature outside gets up to 130 degrees.  That was necessary so that the equipment, which maintains critical temperatures for incubating and hatching the eggs, can operate as it is supposed to.

The hatcher and incubator equipment is designed for commercial poultry operations.  The naturalists hope that with this special care in clean, controlled rooms, 95% of the eggs will hatch successfully.  With clutches of 8 or more eggs, 5 breeding pair in Kellé and 2 breeding seasons a year, it might be possible to produce 75 chicks a year just to start, with an eye to reintroducing this species in the wild.  (To learn more about the “red necked” or North African Ostrich, see this page on the Sahara Conservation Fund website.)  Eggs will spend 41 days in the incubator (pictured left), which maintains them at 97.5 degrees F while periodically turning them.  The NatureForm 1080 incubator can accommodate 90 ostrich eggs, each weighing 3 to 4 pounds.  After several days in the hatcher, they will be introduced into the natural environment and raised by the staff in Kellé.

A thorough program to test and mount every component of the systems was carried out on an RV storage lot in Novato, California, prior to shipping.  The operation was covered extensively by local news, including this segment from ABC News in San Francisco.  15% of the eventual solar electric system was installed, and once it was running everything was powered by the sun.  All the solar canopy truss system components were assembled to be sure it all fit together, then disassembled and packed into a container.  The satellite internet and communications uplink was installed and all the data systems, including a sophisticated monitoring system partially donated by C&C Building Automation and implemented by Steve Attell, a retired Stanford University architect of many talents, was successfully tested.  We will be able to post to the internet and follow all the temperature, humidity and power consumption data over time to help manage the project and develop a post-occupancy evaluation report.

Many people lent their skills and sweat to this project, most notably Stephen Gold, solar project manager for the Wildlife Conservation Fund and the originator of the whole effort, Peter Amick (construction manager), and Henry Cundhill, assistant project manager.  Anyone reading this can help by donating to the project – even though it is complete and has been shipped, loans were required to finish it and more work has yet to be done, including offloading and assembly in Niger.  Please visit the WCN solar project page, watch the short video in progress on this amazing project, and make a contribution by clicking on the “support this project” button!

About a year ago I was asked by an old friend and client, Steve Gold, to help with a project in Kellé, Niger.  Steve has done 46 solar photovoltaic systems for the Wildlife Conservation Network to support conservationists and biologists around the world who are working to save endangered species, and the Niger project represented a substantial leap in scope and complexity over his previous projects.  I signed up not knowing exactly what was involved, and it has exceeded my wildest expectations in terms of the significance of the project, the complexity of the systems, and the time involved.

The North African Ostrich once populated large areas of the Sahel and Sahara in northern Africa.  Measuring up to 9 feet tall it is the largest bird on the planet.  Only something like 24 known breeding adults now survive of this subspecies, Struthio camelus camelus.  When populations descend to these numbers a lack of genetic diversity tends to magnify weaknesses and make the group more prone to disease and reduced breeding success, a problem that has hampered efforts to increase the population.  Nigerien conservationists in Kellé desperately need better means to solve the many difficulties they experience in trying to breed new generations from captive birds, including deteriorating brooding behaviors, low egg viability, and early chick-hood diseases.  All of these problems stem from a variety of stresses suffered by these birds, due in part to the necessity of protective captivity, exposure to caretakers, and susceptibility to disease.  Among the many problems – lack of refrigeration to keep veterinary medications viable.

The Sahara Conservation Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Network, for whom Steve is a longstanding volunteer, have stepped in to assist Nigeriens in the effort to bring this bird back by providing a full range of infrastructure improvements.  Despite habitat challenges and a history of predation, there are outstanding success stories in achieving just such a goal.  The model in this case has been a program led by the San Diego Zoo to re-introduce the California Condor.  Their efforts, as translated to the Sahel, will rely on several key technical factors:

• Use of commercial incubators and hatchers designed for the poultry industry to increase egg and hatchling survivability
• Careful control of environmental factors, such as heat, humidity and disease vectors, meaning:
  • A climate-controlled environment in an area that often sees temperatures of 115 degrees F, utilizing mini-split heat pump systems
  • A source of clean, hot water to maintain sanitation, to be pumped from a new well 1 km away
  • A clean laboratory-like environment
  • 24/7 monitoring of equipment and environmental data
• Most crucially, a supply of electricity in an area that has none

All of these goals require a facility equipped with a variety of systems and features – the nitty gritty of architecture – all designed for efficiency in order to work with solar power.  In my most hopeful moments I imagine that this kind of technology transfer could model a system of sustainable energy production for the region, and that rural electrification in the Sahel could take the form of solar power.

The design has grown a bit since the generation of this rendering.  We now have an array of 110 photovoltaic panels, mounted on a canopy both to shade the buildings from the sun and to keep the panels up out of harm’s way.  These are supported on a system of steel trusses designed to withstand the uplift of possible 95 mph winds (one of the factors in dealing with this project has been the relative lack of weather and other data for this site, which has led us to be as conservative as we think we can get away with).  Under the canopy are 4 shipping containers, outfitted for 1) PV equipment (including 17,000 pounds of sealed batteries), 2) an office, 3) a hatcher room, and 4) an incubator room.  All of the systems and equipment in these containers are pre-installed.  The everyday operational doors, and all connectors for utilities and ventilation, are concealed behind the container shipping doors so that when loaded onto a ship for transport these containers have no protrusions or holes.

I have donated over 250 hours of billable time to this project in the last year, and it has been immensely rewarding to be part of a highly effective team dedicated to an environmental project of this significance.  Besides Steve, who oversees everything, and the internationally reknowned team of biologists who are our “clients,” we have

• Carpentry, electrical and insulation crews giving time at highly reduced rates
• A donated site for construction
• $175,000 of funding from the Sahara Conservation Fund
• Photovoltaic systems provided at or below cost by Outback Systems
• A completely donated $30K mini-split HVAC system from Lennox Industries
• A commercial incubator provided at cost by NatureForm
• Hatchers donated by the St. Louis Zoo (compliments of Bill Houston, a major contributor to the science team)
• A $25K truss system being built by Bob’s Ironworks in Oakland for $10K
• Volunteer efforts from a host of highly talented professionals – ranging from graphic designer, to architect, to fundraiser, to genetic restoration specialist
• And many more

If you read the SCF newsletter linked above, you will see acknowledgements for some of the contributors, and the list grows longer each week.  (By the way, please feel free to look into making your own donation to the project via the Wildlife Conservation Network Donation Page – we will need to raise another $75,000 in the next few months to complete the project, commission it fully assembled, load it onto trucks and ship it to Africa!  If you would like to take advantage of my offer of 1 hour of professional services/consultation as a gift for each $1,000 donated, “dedicate” it to PRA.  Donations can also be made at our crowdfunding site, to be announced in a subsequent post).  You can also visit our Facebook page on this project.

I will post updates on the progress of construction here in the next few months.  In the meantime, here are some construction progress photos:

It’s pretty rare to pioneer the use of something, and have it actually work.  This is one of those stories, attested to by the first-hand experience of two inveterate bird lovers and technophiles with impeccable credentials.  Three years ago we completed a project on their Petaluma farm property that included the first West Coast application of Ornilux “Mikado” anti-bird strike glazing – here’s why that is significant.

According to the Audubon Society, a billion birds a year are killed by collisions with windows in the US alone.  A small portion of that billion have been victims of the picture window in my clients’ farmhouse retreat on the Petaluma River. Read more