Vesta Solar Cooker assembly

We've successfully built and tested the first of several Vestas we're going to make. We got excellent results based on our first tests but are going to gather more data and provide some sexy graphs to really make the point. Construction vids to follow, cooking vids to follow and a cost breakdown too. The machine costs less than $200 and I can build one in three days.

New Home = Sweet Home.

Welcome to Symington Solar Fire Mexican Headquarters! Fraser and I have settled in to our new digs and are keen to get moving.

'Who knew that a couple of peasants could aspire to such comfort?' Fraser asks and only half in jest. Truly, we have been fortunate. After arriving in Puerto Penasco a week ago we again sought accommodations at the Dreamweaver Inn. Oscar, who is the general manager there and the man who we would see be our business partern smiled broadly upon seeing us again and asked 'Couldn't stay away, could you?' We replied that we 'Could have, but we thought better of it, in no small part because of you!' he was both pleased an puzzled. Over the course of the next couple of days we laid out our plan to him and his wife Lupita.

The plan we laid out to him was in essence: 1) Grandad and I secure a house with a suitable yard and a space to fabricate a couple of arrays. 2) We build 3 Vestas, a couple of drying units, an oven and a roaster for nuts and other roastables. 3) We begin experimenting with various fruits and vegetables and eventually settle on a couple of what we think are the best and most marketable. 4) We establish communications with wholesalers and independent health food stores and attempt to establish a flow of goods. 

Oscar said he was able and willing to work with us on a part time basis to learn how we make machines and to lend insights as we develop products. We only have a certain amount of time, however, given that our auto insurance and visas run out mid March. Bringing Oscar into the fold serves the double purpose of having a manager who will be able to continue operations/production in our absence and, in the event that we don't manage to establish a flow of goods, having a local entrepreneur attempt to make a go of using Solar Fire technologies independently.

Oscar is a clever and curious fellow and the suggested action plan involves no risk on his part, so we were not surprised that he was enthusiastically game. That being the case, Fraser and I spent the rest of the week cruising around looking for a suitable place. Eventually, the good people at Twin Dolphin Realty brought us to see the mansion you see here. The sun access in the yard is not ideal, but it is acceptable, there is a garage, it is fully furnished (down to the details... as if people had up and left a month ago) and let me tell you, the price is right!

Real estate here has tanked in the last couple of years. Bob from Twin Dolphin says that the boom that Puerto Penasco experienced from 2004 - 2007 was somewhat artificial and speculative in nature and with the meltdown in the US that since then things have gone from bad to worse. This is evidenced by our getting a place like this for half of what it is worth. We're on a monthly rental, but depending on how things go we might just hang on to the place.

Once we had a place lined up we continued to scout for materials and everything is lined up so that monday we buy metal and glass! By next weekend we should have a preliminary Vesta up and running and another 2 or 3 will not be far behind.

Workshop:

Guaymas / San Carlos

    

This is Guaymas!

Pretty ain't it? Can you blame me for having spent two weeks here without have blogged much? 

The fact of the matter is that there hasn't been much to blog about. We did some productive reconnaissance though. We went a hundred or so clicks south to Ciudad Obregon which I had determined, after checking out  Google Earth satellite imagery, was the closest hotbed of agricultural activity. A day's reconnaissance there and we discovered the biggest fruit and vegetable wholesaler in town. If we ever develop the capacity to dry or otherwise process fruits and veggies, we'll be well set.

'Well what's taking so long?' you might well ask. And so you should. Over the course of exploring the city and  checking out Obregon I expressed to my grandad, Fraser, that I thought it was unlikely that we would be able to leave a profitable, functioning business here by the time our vehicle insurance etc. runs out in mid-March. This caused a certain amount of light consternation and so to settle the matter Fraser suggested that we sit down and story board it. We did. He asked me to lay out my supposed time frame.

It went something like this: 1 month to get settled (house and workshop) and build 2 Vestas one for simple boiling and frying and one especially built for a food dryer. This gives us the ability to experiment and develop products. I used his example of hominy. 

For those unfamiliar, hominy, or here in Mexico, nixtamal results from processing corn in a certain way. You boil the corn for a couple of hours in an alkaline solution which causes the outside layer called the bran to peel away. A little more boiling and the kernel of corn flowers and has been nixtamalized. You then wash the corn and rinse off the alkaline solution and are left with a vastly more nutritious and flavourful kernel. If you're going to use it fresh, that's fine, but if you're planning on shipping it to the states you either have to can it or dry it. We're opting for drying because we've got energy to spare and canning detracts taste and nutrients.

So I took his example of hominy and I said that since the net gives us widely varying estimates on how long to boil hominy, we'd have to run separate batches through at increasing durations, i.e. 1hr30m, 1hr45min, 2hr, 2:15 and so on. Then there's how long to dry them. How dry do they need to get? What about alkalinity levels? How long to soak before hand? After? All these variables will have to be investigated if we are to develop a quality product. I said minimum 2 weeks. To simplify I then said 2 weeks for each new product developed. Not only that, but then we have to settle on a recipe, cook up 5 batches in a row and then set them in their sealed packages in various conditions of heat / light to see how long they take to spoil. I don't want to put a stab-in-the-dark best before date on our products. That could lose us customers down the line.

Then there's import/export complications, a business license, whatever other red tape might trip us up etc. Once we have products, building more solar arrays to boost production capacities and we haven't even approached the wholesalers yet! I concluded that we would be well on our way if before we leave we have 3 or 4 finished products which we could take with us up to the states and Canada and with which we could attempt to interest health food stores and wholesalers. 

I notice I used 'I' a lot there but it was, for the most part, a collaborative process. 

In any event, conversation turned to how the business would function in our absence, Fraser determined that we had to have a managing partner we could trust and that our main man Oscar from the Dreamweaver is the man for the job and that we should, since we already paid for 2 weeks accommodation here, take our time and enjoy ourselves. For the record I argued that Puerto Penasco has roughly 10% less sun, is further from agricultural production and that as much as I like Oscar, we'd likely find someone comparable in Guaymas. 

So we've spent the past two weeks reading abundantly, playing lots of cribbage ( i just today broke out of a 5 game losing streak bringing the record to 15-11 for good old grandad, though that's not what I call him when he's getting 2 fives in every crib...) and spending plenty of time at the beach. :)

Puerto Penasco

Arriving in PP we quickly set about exploring the town, countryside, beaches and a local bar or two. We found that in many ways it met our expectations. Bath-warm water at white sand beaches, plenty of tourists, at least a couple of RV parks, what seemed to be communities made up entirely of American and Canadian retirees, and a thriving marina and fish market.

We arrived on Friday just after lunch and by dinner had made friends with a couple of friendly Arizonans who gave us the lowdown on what`s where and when`s what. October is one of the slowest months as the summer tourists are gone and those who will stay the winter have generally not arrived and are not likely to arrive until after American Thanksgiving or even until after Christmas (these assertions were later verified by various peddlers, hustlers, innocent bystanders and our inn-keep Oscar). Not only that, said they, but the recession has hit rather hard and for the past three years, nowhere close to as many people had been spending the winter as in years previous.

We had, in our explorations, come to remark that there were an awful lot of for sale, for rent and under construction (I use that term loosely, as it looked as if many had not been worked on for some time) properties. We began to doubt.

By Sunday afternoon I had us sorted out with regards to a shop where we would be able to build a couple or three Vestas, a steel supplier, a list of possible rental houses in the neighborhood, groceries and fine accommodations for a week at the Dreamweaver.

That done, we continued to explore the city and the environs, but in doing so remarked to ourselves that it had been at best mostly sunny, but that by 2 in the afternoon the sky would go to haze and even in the morning would not regularly exceed 80% clearness. This, in addition to the lackluster economy had us thinking about exploring further down the coast. Grandad told me that Puerto Penasco had not been his first choice, but that being so close to the border, it seemed a logical one if we were to decide to run any kind of solar dried produce exporting business. He told me about a town roughly 5 hours south that is considered a gem by the sizable ex-pat community that inhabits it. Fraser bade me do a comparison of the available solar data, and using a handy dandy NASA database of more information than I know what to do with I was able to determine that Guaymas is in fact at least 10% sunnier than Puerto Penasco. Further research indicated that Guaymas is closer to productive agricultural regions and that by comparison, Puerto Penasco is something of a party town filled with rowdy teenagers.

That settled it. We would venture to explore Guaymas before planting firm roots in Puerto Penasco. Buuuut.... seeing as we`d paid for a weeks accommodations in advance, we figured we had earned a bit of a break and so have been reclining, reading, drinking Bacardi Anejo, playing cribbage and going to the beach.

We go to Guaymas tomorrow.

The Trip

In six and a half days Fraser and I made our way 4400km to the beautiful, if down with the times, seaside town of Puerto Penasco. We didn`t touch the radio hardly at all and entertained ourselves by playing guessing games and observing the countryside by day and with cribbage by night.

The trip was uneventful and for the most part without adventure, the most exciting deviation being to explore a large wind farm we passed through on the way down.

Near Clinton, Oklahoma at the Blue Canyon Wind Farm, one of the largest wind farms in the US. That wind turbine is 220 feet tall with 115 ft. blades generating 1.65MW!

A refresher on Solar Fire etc.

Visit http://bit.ly/cf1ozx for a quick read about the technologies, the vision and to see some pics of the tech.

Symington Solar

A new chapter in my solar saga is beginning! The originator of the Solar Fire technologies, my grandfather Fraser Symington, has asked that I accompany him to Mexico for the winter so that we might a) escape the Canadian cold (he is 90 years old, after all) and b) establish if/how someone can turn a profit using his Symington Solar Arrays.

The case being thus, my first priority is keeping granddad safe and well and second is to facilitate whatever it is he decides to do. He has been tinkering with and developing the technology for close to 20 years but this is the first time he has been free to really pursue a long term initiative where utilization of the tech would be the central focus.

As evidenced by previous blog posts, essays and websites, I had gone a slightly different direction with the technology than my grandfather advises; he says “Make money with it and the technology will spread automatically.” Fair’s fair and I’m now willing to give his way a shot. Based on our discussions preceding our trip I would most likely do things differently than he plans to, but I really want to see his ideas tested, his theories proved or disproved and I want him to have the satisfaction of seeing his invention fly according to his designs. That being the case I plan to merely act as an extension of his will though I’ll certainly play devil’s advocate when the inclination arises.

Fraser’s plan is to head to Mexico. Reasoning: a) close enough to Canada that should medical problems arise, we’re not pooched, b) we can drive there and so bring down prefab pieces, tools and more gear than we would otherwise be able to c) I speak the language, d) American $. Though we are not married to any idea in particular, we have set our sights on Puerto Peñasco, a town 60 miles from the US Arizona border that is sometimes called “Arizona’s Beach” due to it being the closest seaside to Phoenix and Tuscon.

PP lies near the apex of the Sea of Cortes which is a deep bay formed by the Baja Peninsula. The waters are warm, the tourists and American retirees are numerous and we figure we just might be able to make a buck there.

Off we go in our little Kia Spectra, full to the brim!