news story

Sunflower Solutions of Cleveland brings low-tech solar power to Africa

by John Funk, The Plain Dealer

Two years ago at Miami University of Ohio, senior Christopher Clark had to design a business plan for a human-powered well pump. Fellow students had engineered the pump for use in developing countries, but the device proved incapable of drawing water from deep wells. The experience got Clark to thinking about the nearly 2 billion people in the world living without electricity.

He designed an easy-to-understand, manually movable solar array system as his entry in a business school competition for graduating seniors at Miami. The array does not require as many expensive solar panels as a roof-mounted system.

Clark won with the idea alone and graduated with a degree in management and entrepreneurship. His professors told him that his device was marketable, that he ought to pursue it.

By grit or maybe destiny, he soon found himself in a Cleveland business incubator and then quickly catapulted into a solar project at the Mbaka Oromo Primary School, in rural western Kenya -- a nine-hour bus ride from Nairobi.

Today, Clark heads a start-up company, Sunflower Solutions of Cleveland, that is turning heads as well as solar arrays. "If you would have asked me in college, I never would have imagined my idea would turn into a business," Clark said in an interview at the Goldstein, Caldwell & Associates business incubator in the old Brunswick Florist building on Carnegie Avenue. "I never imagined I would be in Africa the following year."

Nor would he have imagined that Cleveland's Civic Innovation Lab would hand him a check for $30,000 as it has done this week and provide him with four mentors eager to join the dozen or so connected to the incubator to help Sunflower Solutions grow up.

"The innovation lab is really excited about this company," said Jennifer Thomas, the group's director. "We see Chris as a person who is creating a company with a conscience.

"He got in his head that he could create a lower-cost solar solution," she said. "He went low-tech to do it. He's an extremely determined and committed young entrepreneur, of whom we have so many in Cleveland -- and nobody realizes it."

Clark sees himself a little differently. "I have been surrounded by people who know more than I do," he said. "If I were not, I don't think I would have gone this far."

One of those people was nearby, talking with somebody else trying to start new company. Darragh Caldwell, the "C" in GCA, said his group in two years of operation has assisted 12 start-ups.

Clark met Caldwell at a picnic a couple months after graduating and soon got an invitation to visit GCA. "People come to us with an idea," Caldwell said. "If it's a good idea, we'll invest the initial seed money, $5,000 to $20,000. "We help them turn a good idea into a proof of concept," he said with a gesture to the Sunflower solar apparatus reaching into the high ceiling in part of the former showroom.

That assistance is more than financial and includes a network of attorneys, engineers, manufacturers and other experts, he said. "We help put together a very solid company to pass on to the next investment level. Our goal is to keep them in Cleveland."

In Clark's case, that assistance included the connection to Cornell -- Caldwell is a Cornell alumni -- and the airfare to get him to Kenya along with his first prototype.

The school project had been launched by a Cornell University faculty and student group, which just happened to have a slight connection to one of the founders of the business incubator in Cleveland. Clark's system saved the project about $5,000 because it did not need as many solar panels as a roof system.

"It's definitely a pebble in a puddle," Cornell business professor Cindy van Es said of the project and of Sunflower Solutions. "Chris Clark was wonderful. I think he has a great idea. Lights have worked great."

The African trip alone would have changed Clark's life.

"The project exposed me to the situation in Africa," said Clark, who grew up in Chagrin Falls. "It was the first time I realized how privileged we are in the United States. We are an anomaly. The rest of the world is the norm."

The experience convinced Clark that keeping things simple is the right idea.

The school in Kenya not only has electric lights powered by solar panels and a battery storage system, the school also powers laptop computers donated by Cornell. And it has enough power to charge the cell phones of nearby residents -- for a fee -- a practice often seen in towns with access to the grid.

"With the extra money from selling the extra power, the school now feeds orphan kids," Clark said. "Orphan kids getting regular meals, that is when it hit me. This is more than just a company to make money. It will change lives."

Clark's array is mounted on a heavy steel pole and generates an average of 40 percent more total power in a day than roof-mounted panels because it tracks the sun -- making it possible to generate power with fewer panels for well pumps or anything else.

The system deliberately has no motors or microprocessors. It relies on a deceptively simple, color-coded chart and markings on the machine itself -- a kind of cookbook approach to celestial positioning. But it doesn't even use words. Just color blocks and marks.

And that is the genius. The coding is based on an ultra-sophisticated set of formulas that take into account the array's global position, the season and the time of day.

All the array operator has to know is the latitude, which direction is north and the season. Then she or he must slide the array to a new, marked position on the mounting pole three times a day. The process involves matching color blocks shown on the machine.

Sunflower's simple positioning system generates about 6 percent less power than its high-tech competitors, but saves thousands of dollars in technology costs, Clark said.

"The whole solar industry has raced to be more sophisticated, raced to get the next gizmo that tracks the sun to a hundredth of a degree instead of tens of degrees," he said. "The problem is, you will never make this solution applicable to rest of the world, to South America and Africa. They cannot afford that high-tech technology. "

Clark intends to keep Sunflower Solutions in Cleveland. He is buying the panels from a Cleveland supplier and has had the machining and metal work done here.

He designed a metal framework using a rail track system that makes it simple and easy to mount any size solar panel. He is looking for a local manufacturer to make something similar to the German-made rails.

Case Western Reserve University and Lakeland Community College are talking to him about purchasing the arrays. And he has received many inquiries from high schools that see the system as a teaching tool.

And his real target market?

"We have many dozens of pending sales in coming months," he said, "from Nigeria, Senegal, Liberia and Kenya."

(Source: http://snipr.com/u8081)