For residents of third world countries, access to regular water and grid electricity remains sporadic.
Even though the supply of clean drinking water has improved greatly with people tapping into ground water using bore wells, the supply of constant electricity remains elusive and many people are doomed to fight the dark of the night using oil-lit lamps or use the limited power a battery backup can provide.
For the underprivileged population in places like Africa, designer Ryan Jongwoo Choi has designed the ES Pipe Waterwheel concept which has the ability to turn regular plumbing into a mini hydroelectric generator.
One of the finalists at the 2012 IDEA award (International Design Excellence Award), the concept calls for a special intermediate plumbing fixture that can be attached to regular plumbing pipes.
Each time the tap is turned on, the flow of water through the pipe passes through the installed waterwheel which turns the Kinect energy from the flowing water into electricity that can be used to power light bulbs.
The installation generates clean power and only utilizes the energy created by the flow of water which is otherwise untapped. The easy to install and easy to detach waterwheel stores the power in a battery and the user can easily detach the gizmo and use the portable light wherever it is needed.
The ES Pipe Waterwheel concept can also be used with hoses to make the process of installing and uninstalling more convenient.
