[Alana Siegner, ERG graduate student] 

Volunteer Harvest Days (Siegner)

These people I’ve been surrounded by this past summer have taught me to believe in my goals for the future (“How’re you gonna have a dream come true if you don’t have a dream?” my farmer Doug likes to say); they’ve taught me to better articulate my current research aims; to build relationships with people of all ages; to appreciate and learn from natural beauty; to communicate well; and to express gratitude openly.

During the months of June and July, and for a week in August, I’ve been working on a small organic vegetable farm on Lopez Island, off the coast of Washington State.

Sweetbriar Farm Stand Saturdays (Siegner)

Lopez is a small island of about 2,500 permanent residents, and its 29.5 square miles are predominantly agricultural. It is known for farming and for the “Lopez Wave” exchanged between passing motorists. For someone studying sustainable agriculture and farm-to-school programs, Lopez is an ideal place to spend a few months sans textbooks and problem sets -- immersed in the farming lifestyle.

I developed many concrete skills while living and working on Lopez: how to drive a tractor and backhoe, how to set up drip irrigation systems, how to use an array of different weeding tools, how to properly maintain compost piles, and how to water different types of plants. I also gained conceptual knowledge I’d been lacking: how many gallons of water are required for 3 acres of veggies per day using drip vs. sprinkler systems (about 10 times less); how to attract native pollinators; best practices for rebuilding soil health and promoting soil carbon storage; the economics of small farms; and the benefits of growing many varieties of each plant (we grew 13 varieties of lettuce and over 20 heirloom varieties of tomatoes).

Laney haying with the backhoe (Siegner)

I worked at the Sweetbriar Farm 3 days a week, walking the fields alongside Doug each morning at 7 am as we made a work plan for the day, and cooking meals with Tamara most evenings. We planted over 5,000 row-feet of veggies while I was there. I worked at the Lopez School 2 days a week, helping the garden managers run the farm to school program in the summer months while students are out of school. The kids do a lot of work on the ½ acre farm and orchard during the school year, planting, weeding and harvesting over 6,000 lbs of produce, which goes straight into their cafeteria lunches. During the summer months, Suzanne and Valeri keep up the good work with help from occasional interns.

In addition to harvesting and planting for the fall, we fixed the irrigation system, built new planting areas, and put up lots of food in the kitchen, preserving for the school year food items like pesto, veggie roasts, hot pepper relish, raspberries, and tomato sauce.

Tomatoes at the school greenhouse (Siegner)

Aside from these “hard” skills gained from working with my hands, I found my two months on Lopez most transformative because of the softer skills I developed from working in such a sustainable, waste-water-and-energy conscious, close-knit community.

The people I met were very open to conversation about whatever it was that they did on Lopez, and with most people it was at least 4 different things. Someone might volunteer at The Dump (the award-winning recycling facility on the island), teach at the school, run a B&B, and sell their copper crafts at the Farmer’s Market each weekend. Or they may operate a goat dairy, play the fiddle at island square dances, keep bees, and write for the island blog, Project 468.

ERG alumni Chris and Chom Greacen, part of the Lopez community, travel regularly to Southeast Asia, collect signatures for the WA 732 Initiative to institute a carbon tax in WA state, maintain a thriving home garden, raise 2 kids, live in a (soon to be certified) net zero energy home, and when I arrived were eating a 100% local Lopez diet.

Common Ground community, an affordable housing community working towards net-zero status, where Chris and Chom Greacen live (Siegner)

A union of the “soft” and “hard” skillsets of Lopez came out in my running friend Diana’s statement that summarizes the attitude of many Lopezians: “I like to move my body in nature and experience this feeding of my soul.”

Aldo Leopold, too, articulated a mental and physical union of sorts in his concept of a “land ethic.” By combining actions and beliefs into an environmental lifestyle, a healthier, more resilient world is possible. By following the Lopez example of working with the land rather than against it, in combination with a thriving sense of civic engagement and community wellbeing, a more sustainable, environmentally restorative food system results.

The corn grows (Siegner)

Note: The views expressed here belong solely to the author of each entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

by Diego Ponce de Leon Barido, ERG PhD Candidate
with team members Javier Rosa (TIER, UC Berkeley), Stephen Suffian (Villanova University), and Odaly (Nicaragua local team)

I feared the worst: The bags had been thrown around at customs damaging our gadgets, the humidity and heat had fried our circuits, mice had eaten away at the cables, and our equipment was now being sold in Managua’s electronics black market.

Our ultimate objective for the trip in Nicaragua was to deploy a wireless sensor network in thirty micro-enterprises and households to monitor and inform the design of a micro-level demand response implementation for renewable energy integration.

One of the most stressful moments of our two and a half-month implementation was the ride back from customs to our home-stay, after recovering all our equipment. On my ride back, I shared a tiny Nissan car with two strangers with some of our equipment being tied to the car’s roof with the rest of the equipment overflowing the Nissan’s tiny trunk. The bags also weighed much less than when we initially handed them off at customs, but stopping to check the bags’ contents in the street could have meant losing even more equipment to petty theft.

We planned to be in Nicaragua for two and a half months. We allowed for failure in our mind, knowing well that we could only plan for the few things that we could control, and left extra mental space and time for the natural uncertainty of bureaucratic processes, as well as all the unforeseen mistakes that our team would surely make along the way.

Basically, we planned for what we could control, and assumed that good luck and hard work would take care of randomness. First, we would forget nothing back in Berkeley. Then, our technology would spend exactly two weeks at customs, and Nicaragua’s National Engineering University (UNI) would help us release it without paying taxes. Because we had tested our hardware and software ad nauseam in Berkeley, our deployment would be a simple "plug and play," and we would "figure out" communications for a demand response implementation "in country."

Customs was a nightmare that required 15 full days of absolute patience, cultural navigation, and polite pestering

Again, our objective was to deploy a wireless sensor network in thirty micro-enterprises and households. We call these "sensors nodes" a FlexBox. In the end, we implemented 29 (out of 30) partially working FlexBoxes in Managua, and kept one for future testing in Berkeley.

Customs was a nightmare that required 15 full days of absolute patience, cultural navigation, and polite pestering (and thousands of dollars paid in taxes). Our hardware passed most tests, but some sensors failed in the field after being exposed to being thrown around, drowning in freezing water, and sharp metal doors searing connections away. We got carried away in what we thought would be useful (but not necessary) software developments instead of focusing on a bulletproof version of our minimum viable product (MVP), and were not even close to "figuring out" a cost-effective communications protocol in Managua.

However, despite our "natural" missteps (things that can go wrong, will go wrong), we have begun developing a unique regional dataset which will allow us to correlate micro-level demand and behavior, to grid level measurements such as system frequency, generation from fossil and renewable resources, and weather data.

Our project also considers increasingly important equity implications of smart grid deployments: How are data exchanges mutually beneficial? How can urbanites be more engaged in a low carbon transitions? How can renewable energy based grids provide higher quality service and useful information to their clients?

To our knowledge, our project is the first of its kind in the region and will greatly contribute to shedding light on how existing grid infrastructure can be used to further increase the equitable penetration of uncertain and variable renewable energy.


SURVIVING IMPLEMENTATION
Throughout this process, our team learned a lot about what it takes to go from plans to implementation. Below are ten takeaways for future implementation that other researchers introducing new technology into foreign countries may find useful as well.

1. Customs
Depending on where you are traveling and what technology you’re deploying, your experience will vary drastically. If you are in a country where rules, guidelines and regulations are carefully detailed and followed your job is easy – read the rules and play by the book and most likely you won’t have a problem. However, if you are in country where everything is routinely improvised, you’ll most likely be at the mercy of a local customs agent at the beginning of your first "in country" adventure.

Make sure a handy person in your team is fluent in the local language and culture, you have "extra" money in case you need to hire a customs agency, and that your patience "hat" and best manners are at their best all the time. Two to three weeks is normal operating procedure, if you do everything right. If you make mistakes, don’t have the right permits or forms, or are being regularly scammed because you don’t understand the language well enough, this process could take months.

Our technology traveled from San Francisco...

... to El Salvador...

... to the customs of Manauga...

... and finally to 29 homes

2. Parts
Bring an extra set of cheap "parts" that you may not be able to find in country. Doing your due diligence is very important. Make a list of the things you can find in country and a list of things you can’t find in country. Bringing extra things that you can’t find in country will cause problems at customs, so make sure you have lists of parts. Bring an extra two or three "final products" (whatever those may be). Regardless of how good you think your product is, you’ll have to keep iterating in the field – having a working final product as a test bed while you deploy is very important.

3. Money
If you are working on a tight budget, you’ll have to be very creative about how you spend your money. Besides your technology, and if you have a team, you will all have to stay in the same place (and that place must have a good working space). You’ll also need a car, money for food, extra parts, and many other things that will show up as you begin your project. You’ll also need to hire a local team, both for the deployment as well as for your project’s follow up.

Although "strong collaboration" with institutions is important, and "community ownership" and "partnerships" are essential (these buzzwords are all the rage in development circles), nothing gets people working – at the pace that you want them to work like money. Be wise in how you spend your money, and prepare a detailed budget months ahead of time.

4. Contacts

You’ll soon find out that your Berkeley education and prior experiences mean very little once your project "breaks ground"

Things will inevitably go wrong. Make sure that you have friends and connections in the right places. Our team had signed collaboration agreements with the National Engineering University, the Ministry of Energy and Mines, and a local renewable energy startup. None of these signed agreements meant much until we needed to show that we knew people in high places, and that they were keeping a close eye on our project. Keep those signed agreements handy, you never know when you might need them.

5. Local Team
Nothing – NOTHING - happens without a local team. You might think your clever engineering skills have taken you far in life, or that your Peace Corps experience has turned you into a community relations expert, but you’ll soon find out that your Berkeley education and prior experiences mean very little once your project "breaks ground."

We hired a community liaison (Odaly), an electrician (Roberto), and an electronics engineer (Jorli) to work with us throughout the implementation and to stay with us through follow up. While we handled the implementation logistics and directed everything, they were heavily involved in troubleshooting, surveying, and follow up. They have all learned a wide variety of skills along the way, such as fixing broken sensors, accessing PostGRES databases, and setting up a local WiFi network.

Once you leave, you need to make sure that there is a team of people that will be able to solve problems as they arise. Without a good local team, your project will last only about two to three weeks post-implementation.

6. Build/Deploy Team
A small team needs to be composed of people with interchangeable skills that complement each other well. (Three people sounds about right). One person can be responsible for a lot but not for everything. If your project is technical, then everyone in your team must be able to help, or everyone must be willing to learn (fast). There will be plenty of times for PANIC to sneak in.

If you’re leading, you can never panic. If you’re someone who panics, control yourself. When things get hot, you’re stressed, or you’re panicking, control yourself. Drink water. Take a break. Be respectful. Try not to complain (too much). Nothing sucks more than having to deal with a difficult situation, and with someone who is complaining about it.

Javier and Stephen did A LOT of hacking to get an excellent MVP

7. Respect your MVP
You arrived to your site with a minimum viable product (MVP). You have something that works. Your goal should be to make that product work on site with as little change as possible. Don’t add components (hardware or software) to your MVP "in country." You need time to test new additions, and more time to make them work like you want them to. Additional things can be done once your MVP is fully functional on the field. Until that point, eschew any ideas to make the product better, faster, or easier to use. Any improvements should have happened during the testing phase and can happen when you’re done with your deployment. If you have a short deployment time, respect your MVP.

8. Time
You should leave, at minimum, three weeks of follow up after you have finished your deployment.  Things will fail and break, and you need time to fix them. You also need time to train your local team on troubleshooting. Leaving a country right after deployment is symptomatic of the "parachute" approach that most "development engineers" work with (drop in, have your adventure, drop some technology, fly off to another adventure). After your deployment, do your due diligence and stay in country to finish the training with your local team, make and solve problems, troubleshoot, and prepare your project for the next few months before the next iteration.

9. Release
Deployments are high-stress situations. Make sure that you’re doing something fun the entire time. Bond. Keep things fun. Remember that no one is forcing you to do this, so make sure that you’re enjoying life while doing it. If not, what’s the point?

10. Humility, Respect
Respect the people you’re working with. Respect your local team. Respect each other. Be humble about what you can accomplish. Accept and apologize when you make mistakes. Accept others' apologies. Don’t dwell. Ignore the little things that don’t matter, but REALLY pay attention to detail. Appreciate your team, you’re part of it. You are all learning from each other.

Our project looks to use thermostatically controlled loads at the micro-level to develop cost-effective strategies for renewable energy integration.

Note: The views expressed here belong solely to the author of each entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.