News in the SolarVillage
Test village to be built in Tamera, Portugal

This year, 2009, we want to take the next big step of setting up a "test-field" for the planned TTT-Platform and the SolarVillage, which will be established on a special place within Tamera.

http://www.tamera.org/index.php?id=604&L=0

During the first four months of this year, the SolarVillage project group focused on the development of a solid and humane foundation, where trust among the coworkers can continuously go deeper, and increasingly reliable and professional working structures of communication and cohabitation can emerge.

Our next step is the construction of this “test-field” in the current “Valley Village” along the lines of the “African Village” designed by Jürgen Kleinwächter.

Our short-term goal is to set up the “Solar Power Village” technology. This technology creates synergy, is relatively simple to build, and thus represents a valuable and integral part of the overall solar system both ecologically and economically. Our plan is to try it out in practice and improve it in the daily life of the SolarVillage Project Group. This approach follows the basic idea of the SolarVillage concept, that a group of about fifty people will live an experimental life with the new technical components. The core element of the "Solar Power Village", the Energy Power
Greenhouse with the hot-oil kitchen, will be combined with a Scheffler
reflector, parabolic mirror cookers SK14, and solar ovens - all
components of the solar summer kitchen.

Apart from the production of heat for cooking, the hot oil produced in the greenhouse will also drive a Stirling engine that can produce electricity as well as mechanical energy. Later we also plan to integrate O2 combustion (according to the ideas of Horst Wagner) and a biogas system to complement these installations.

This “test-field” project is the next step on the way to developing the SolarVillage: The technology, and the communitarian way of living that we experienced during this recent four-month intensive group time, complement each other to create a single living entity. By autumn we will have tangible results and measured values resulting from this practical experiment, as well as a showcase to demonstrate the combination of these two elements that can be shown to visitors.

In autumn we will also organize a special kind of “Investors' Event” for a select group of people with broad views and financial power. We plan to give an insight into the actual daily life as it will work in and around a SolarVillage, and one goal of the event is to find investors for the continued development of the SolarVillage concept and the TTT-Platform.

Another part of this year's experiment is the integration of the nearby "Valley Garden" into the growing water landscape built in cooperation with the Tamera ecology team under the auspices of permaculture expert and “Rebel farmer” Sepp Holzer.

We kindly invite you to contribute to the manifestation of this experimental living model. The financing of the test field SolarVillage will cost about 73,000 Euro. Donations of any amount are warmly welcome.

We are also very interested in the help of experts who want to participate in the practical construction and development of this experiment. We ask those interested to contact us for further information.

Roland Luder
for the SolarVillage Project Group

http://www.tamera.org/index.php?id=604&L=0