MIT Solve

Solution Overview & Team Lead Details

Solution name.

Electric Step

Provide a one-line summary of your solution.

A major paradigm for Africa's unexploited energy resources through the use of a low cost smart tile based on piezoelectricity and a web app.

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

As the world is evolving, technology is also drastically expanding and economies are now largely dependent on electricity/energy. If the demand for power is greater than the supply there is risk of a lack of energy. This leads to adaptation to other sources of energy like firewood which leads to long term negative effects on the planet Earth. A great many of the world’s trees have been destroyed to obtain firewood which in turn leads to increased erosion, soil salinization, shortage of timber and increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is not good health-wise for the general population. (Rebecca Lindsey, 2015) says Carbon dioxide levels today are higher than at any point in at least the past 800,000 years .

The African continent is rich in a diverse number of energy sources ranging from hydro energy to solar energy, but the big question is, are these resources being adequately utilized? Of all energy sources, Africa consumes most oil (42% of its total energy consumption) followed by gas (28%), coal (22 %), hydro (6%), renewable energy (1%) and nuclear (1%). Even worse, nearly 60% of refrigerators used in health clinics in Africa have unreliable electricity, this compromises the safe storage of vaccines and medicines. Affordable and clean energy is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals because energy is plays a very big role in the development of an economy. The availability of energy allows students to study and businesses to remain open even after the sun goes down. All of these factors lead to increased national productivity which accelerates economic growth. Solar, which Africa has in abundance, can provide almost 10 terawatts of new energy! In a nutshell, Africa is actually very rich in energy resources but most of its potential energy is not exploited.

Looking at the direct impacts of power outages in one particular high density suburb, where one of the team members reside, the team spent time going around a suburb called Dzivarasekwa in search of concrete evidence of the effects of lack of electricity in Zimbabwe. Dzivarasekwa is situated to the north western side of the City of Harare. A section of the suburb has been completely deprived of power even at a time where the country is facing an energy crisis and electricity is only brought to homes for a limited number of hours. The team carried out structured and semi- structured interviews to obtain information on the issue. It is said that there appears to have been a fault on their main power transformer and the fault has affected at least thirty houses, leaving them with no electricity since January 5, 2023 and no-one knows when the fault is going to be rectified.

Elevator pitch

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What is your solution?

Discovered in 1880 by French physicists Jacques and Pierre Curie, piezoelectricity has subsequently been exploited in a number of useful applications, such as the production of piezoelectric inkjet printing, Braille machinery. However, in as much as all of these may be breakthroughs, there is a cry to produce more sustainable energy, thus Electric Step is an idea the team has come up with to combat problems like the ones being experienced in Dzivarasekwa. We have managed to specially design a low cost floor tile based on a web app, interlinked with multiple sensors and fitted with sensitive piezoelectric cells which create an electric charge when stepped on or when a force is applied to the tile. The piezoelectric effect is common in piezoelectric ceramics like Lead zirconate titanate (PZT).The preferred piezo-ceramics were fitted beneath a low cost tile 3D printed using the lightest and yet strongest filament, polycarbonate.

The tile converts the dynamic energy from any form of mechanical stress into sustainable power, which is to be put away in a 9V lithium polymer battery. Since 3D printing is becoming more commercialized, it makes it cheaper for future uses in roads and buildings because the smart tiles can be easily retrofitted to existing constructions or can be planned into any new ground surface framework using 100% reused materials. For a household, an alternative would be to use recycled plastic that is compacted together to make the smart tiles.

A step up transformer will be introduced to multiply the amount of energy produced. It increases the output voltage in relation to the input voltage. The AC voltage produced will be converted to DC voltage using AC-DC voltage rectifier circuit in order to have the best output to be stored in batteries. The entire system will be monitored by a web app.

Who does your solution serve? In what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Paying close attention to the practical and commercial implementation of the smart energy system, it should be able to suit real life situations. This proposed solution seeks to serve the people of the Zimbabwean community and Africa as a whole as it is legging behind in terms of energy production. The use of recycled material poses a great relief on the energy usage during the making of the smart floor tiles that we are used to seeing daily in our homes. The tiles can be retrofitted to existing constructions or can be planned into any new ground surface framework easily. Elimination of such limitations means the tiles can be designed in any shape to meet the required needs. If this system is adopted on a larger scale, it will decrease unemployment rates in Zimbabwe due to many job opportunities provided, from retrofitting to maintenance.

The nation is currently facing a crisis in terms of power outages and our solution is aimed at bringing back the best practices and pushing for abstinence from causing global warming by cutting down trees and burning fossils. This project aims at maximizing the harnessing of piezoelectricity like never before through the use of modern day science and Internet Of things, thus bringing more sustainable and dependable energy to the world.

If piezoelectricity is quickly adopted on a much larger scale through the use of Electric Step, then the gap in renewable energy production in the nation and around the globe will take a paradigm shift, thus promoting the seventh UN’s SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) of Affordable and Clean Energy.

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

Our team is made up of young people who are well vexed with their community and can communicate well with the inhabitants. It is such skills that helped us gather much information from the inhabitants of our community. It is the problems that we experience daily that push us to work towards finding a solution. We leave no room for complaints, we might not have the necessary funds to create a topnotch practical solution but we are constantly trying to use low cost materials, things that can be easily found in homes and from old electricals. We are nowhere close to a perfect solution but our enthusiasm is what fascinates the people in our community the most. Through volunteering at a local church and around the community, we've had a better understanding of the needs of the people.

What steps have you taken to understand the needs of the population you want to serve?

During our research, we had to ask our selves social questions, questions like; What the social need? How can it be addressed? For example do we need to automate? How will full automation, for example, impact on society? Answers to these questions gave us design choices.

We Identified a problem largely affecting our community and we took time studying it and came across a theoretical foundation to our proposed solution. We wanted to create a solution for the people, in accordance to what they need and not what we think they need, so we had to include them on every step of the way. We carried out structured and semi-structured interviews to gather the best data possible.

We worked with a few experts who have been working for the city council for years. One such particular individual is a retired fire fighter and rescuer, he helped us understand the suburb of Dzivarasekwa on a deeper level and the major problems that pensioners like him face daily. We have also managed to engage young people in our research by exhibiting our solution to one particular event where there were learners from across the country and we distributed questionnaires to get feedback from them. We have used this feedback to better our design .

Which aspects of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Taking action to combat climate change and its impacts (Sustainability)

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Concept: An idea being explored for its feasibility to build a product, service, or business model based on that idea.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team located?

Harare, Zimbabwe

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Blessed Kutyauripo

More About Your Solution

If your solution has a website or an app, provide the link here:

N/A

What makes your solution innovative?

In order to curb the shortage of energy availability and use of fossils, Zimbabwe boasts of three main aspects which are; hydropower, solar power, and biogas. However, these alone are not supporting the demands of the nation adequately. Furthermore, the aspects are accompanied by quite a number of disadvantages. Some of he disadvantages are listed below;

Hydropower:
• Release large amounts of CO2 and methane.
• Areas near dams are degraded.
• Disturbs ecological balance near dam

Solar:
• Only harnessed when the sun is out
• Large area of open land is required.
• High maintenance

Our Solution provides a new shift in subsidizing energy. We intend to exploit piezoelectricity on a larger scale, something that hasn't been done yet. This will be largely achieved by stepping up AC voltage produced when our smart tile is compressed using the principle of electromagnetic induction - mutual induction. In 2021, Zimbabwe imported an estimate of 2,920,000 MWh in electricity, covering about 31% of its annual needs and if piezoelectricity is taken seriously this gap can be closed. The technology that we intend to use is something new to our community and that's an added advantage. On a residential level, home owners will be able to monitor their smart tiles from their mobile devices through the use of the web app. We strongly believe that so much can be done with the wasted energy that goes by as people walk around.

What are your impact goals for the next year, and how will you achieve them?

our impact goals include:

To build the world's most sustainable power grid. In order to achieve this, we are going to carry out fundraisers and connect with experts who have been in the industry longer so that they may be able to help us in making our proposed solution more sustainable.
Getting our local government to be more involved. In order to achieve this, we are going to raise awareness in schools and these young voices will advocate for us through Science competitions held on a district and national level.
To create affordable mass market energy. In order to achieve this we will be using low cost material and recycled plastic.

Describe the core technology that powers your solution.

Our Solution is largely based on 6 major components which include: piezoelectricity, a step up transformer, sensors, rectifier, batteries and a web application.

How the technology works:

Piezoelectric crystals are electrically neutral, the atoms inside them may not be symmetrically arranged, but their electrical charges are perfectly balanced: a positive charge in one place cancels out a negative charge nearby. However, if you squeeze or stretch a piezoelectric crystal, you deform the structure, pushing some of the atoms closer together or further apart, upsetting the balance of positive and negative, and causing net electrical charges to appear

A step up transformer will be introduced to multiply the amount of energy produced. It increases the output voltage in relation to the input voltage. The AC voltage produced will be converted to DC voltage using AC-DC voltage rectifier circuit in order to have the best energy output that can support the system and be stored in batteries. Stored energy will be used to power pressure sensors that will provide necessary data to be displayed on a web application. The web application is intended to keep track of data on foot traffic, energy produced daily and arithmetic operations like the calculation of the amount of energy that can be expected per year. The web app can be accessed remotely. On a more commercial stage, the application will be used to monitor surveillance cameras too in order to combat theft.

Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:

Internet of Things

In which countries do you currently operate?

Zimbabwe

How many people does your solution currently serve, and how many do you plan to serve in the next year? If you haven’t yet launched your solution, tell us how many people you plan to serve in the next year.

Currently our Solution has not been launched yet. We expect to start small, from about 5 houses. This is in order for us to anticipate the performance of our system. Once we get the expected outcome or something close to the expected outcome, in the next year, we intend to go all out and serve the entire city of Harare inclusive of outdoors, roads, pavements, and not just households.

What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your goals in the next year?

Our barriers include:

Lack of basic supplies
Funding, to make an actual prototype.
Revenue to purchase Transformers.
Technical support to make a fully functional web application.
Legal Support from the government.
Mentorship

Your Team

Business Model