Sustainability Videos & Lecture Series

Dan O’Neill: Alright. We’re going to start here just in a second. If you’re gonna get some more food, please do. Of course, throughout the show, feel free to get some more. Welcome and thank you for coming, and to hear this presentation today or this panel discussion. My name is Dan O’Neill. I now work for the Global Institute of Sustainability as the general manager of the new Sustainability Solutions Extension Service which is one of the seven initiatives under the Waltons’ Sustainability Solutions Initiatives Investment that Rob and Melani Walton made.

I started that job basically right around June 1, but prior to that for the previous academic year, I was the lecture and program chair for the Technology Entrepreneurship and Management Program at the College of Technology and Innovation on the Polytech campus. My purpose here today is just to introduce you briefly to the session and then turn it over to Dr. Mark Henderson who will moderate the panel. The background of the project is that while I was out there, one of the faculty members brought a hot potato to me I guess. It was known as the Department of Energy’s American Indian Research and Education Initiative which was—the DOE was asking us to respond to largely because of the work of one of our panelists in the previous summer.

Then, that was to develop a joint research project between a research one university, in this case ASU, and a tribal college or university, in this case Navajo Technical College in Crownpoint. We wrote that proposal and we won it, and one of the people that wrote a letter of support was another one of our panelists or two of our panelists really, Elsa Johnson of IINA Solutions who had a little thing called the Plateau Solar Project, which was a series of solar installations and partnership with their technical partner, Mark Snyder who I shouldn’t say technical partner. Her partner, Mark Snyder, who is one of the original sustainability guys from the ‘70s. Is that fair to say? Maybe ‘60s, ‘50s, ‘40s. ‘60s.

They have had this project that they will explain to install off-grid integrated living solutions, and we chose that as the installation site for this joint project between NTC and ASU. When we decided to focus on that and got into the planning process, what happened is we learned that they needed some help in getting some of their installations done. We didn’t know exactly what kind of help. We do now, and you’ll hear about that, but so we turned to Dr. Henderson, who founded GlobalResolve in which I had been associated with some time, for a summer service learning project that would assist in some of those installations. That’s really what you’re gonna hear about today. Not so much the DOE project though I think Mike will talk about that some, but more the actual service learning project where we helped install some of these systems. With that, I’ll turn it over to Dr. Henderson.

Mark Henderson: Okay. Thank you, Dan. Welcome, everyone. This is a fun panel to moderate because it’s a fun project. Not only a significant project, but one that’s a lot of fun, and it was fun I think for our students who went there. I think it was fun for all of us adults, older people who also went there. We wanna tell you a little bit about that today. I think I’m supposed to introduce the panel members. Well, what I think I’d like to do is just have them just tell you their names and have them sort of stand up right now. Then, I’ll give you a little description of who they are right before they individually speak.

We have with us Elsa Johnson. Elsa, would you stand up? Elsa is from IINA Solutions in Arizona and Mark Snyder, who is from Mark Snyder Electric and has a house in San Diego, but he’s actually a globetrotter all over the world. We have Michael Funk, who is a graduate student at Polytech in alternative energy, and Hyejung Lim, who is a sustainability student here on Tempe campus. What I wanna do is tell you a little about GlobalResolve which is the organization of a program at ASU that sort of provides the students for projects like these and provides opportunities for students. I wanna take you really quickly through the basic steps of what GlobalResolve is.

How many of you have ever heard of GlobalResolve, anyone? A few. It’s sort of a well-kept secret. We hope to end that well-kept secret status sometime soon. GlobalResolve is a program at CTI. CTI is the College of Technology and Innovation at ASU Polytech to reduce local and global poverty by helping to make sustainable communities by addressing problems in health, energy, water, and other grand challenges. We do that in three ways. Number one, we hopefully create new solutions to empower lives and then reach communities. Number two, we help create new business ventures for sustainable economy in those locations, and number three, life-changing educational experiences for students. I think the Plateau Project is one of those.

The way we do this is we first try to understand what problems are. We go to the source. In this case, we’re in a village in Ghana trying to understand what the problems are in the village and understand what the resources are. Then, we create teams of students, faculty, and partner with the community. In this case, the students are doing a project in the lab to help create solutions. This is over a semester or a year, depending on what the project is, or even longer. We try to solve basic needs because if the community has really basic needs before they can actually move into economic development, for example, there’s no clean water. They’re living on the edge of starvation or of survival. We try to help them through that and build them up to a place where they’re ready to do something more significant.

We’ve provided water filters for a village. We provide electricity. Hook them up to the grid and things like that. We also implement the solutions that the student teams come up with in water, energy, and health. Here’s an example of one. One of the biggest problems in the world for childhood death is smoky cooking fires. It’s one of the top five causes of childhood death in the world because the moms have the babies strapped to them when they cook. They’re inside usually to keep the monsoon rains from putting out the fire. Smoke comes in. The babies get respiratory disease, and they die.

We’ve developed gel fuel, cooking fuel, which is smokeless. It’s basically ethanol with a gelling agent in it, and the students designed and built a still on campus. We were making ethanol unbeknownst to the university administration on Polytech Campus, and then we sent it to Ghana. We set it up in the chief’s—behind the chief’s house in a production facility. That’s just an example of the types of projects we do.

The way GlobalResolve’s structure looks like this. We have students, partners, and communities all working together on projects in different countries, and the projects become solutions. The students have an immersive experience, an immersive experience by traveling or by connecting with the partners in virtual way that helps them understand the cultural lifestyle and needs of folks in unreached communities. The opportunity is for people to get involved in GlobalResolve, and that’s everyone in this room. If you want to get involved in GlobalResolve projects, there are multiple opportunities.

There are courses you can take at Polytech. Design for the Developing World is one that’s going on right now. We have several projects going on. Another course is Village Energy Systems. It will be offered in the spring. Another one is called Global Impact Entrepreneurship will also be offered in the spring. They’re all courses that let you work on projects. They’re very project-oriented. The Polytech DNA is project-based learning, and this is in spades in GlobalResolve. Also allow you to do study abroad. We go to Africa, Ghana every year. We’ve also been to India and Mexico. This past year, we went to Mexico even though it was a little bit dangerous. We took some students, and it turned out to be a very safe experience and very good one.

You can also major in technological entrepreneurship and management at Polytech which has a concentration in social entrepreneurship so there’s an opportunity there, too. You can minor in social entrepreneurship also. There’s something of the GlobalResolve Club. GlobalResolve Club is right now in Polytech. We’re establishing a Tempe version of that, a Tempe chapter of the GlobalResolve Club this fall so keep your eyes and ears open at Changemaker Central to hear about that. Who’s on the team for GlobalResolve? We need all majors. We need sustainability. We need engineering. We need technology. We need business. We need English literature. We need psychology, sociology.

There is no limit to the number of viewpoints we need to solve problems like this because if you focus on only one issue and one focus point, you only solve one aspect of the problem. You have to look at this in a system’s view. We need lots of folks for the system’s view. We need all folks who are interested so come join us. I wanna talk now about the Plateau Solar Project, which is on the Navajo Reservation, which was a GlobalResolve-staffed project, not GlobalResolve-initiated. You’ll hear Elsa and Mark talk about how the project was initiated, and Michael, too, and how the funding was received and how they organized it. They’re the experts on that, not me.

I just wanna lead you through a little bit of narrative about how this thing proceeded once we started on it. We started in May by all gathering. This is the Polytech Campus. You can see Sparky on the water tower in the background, but we all boarded a bus. We went to the APS site here in Tempe, and we loaded solar panels on the bus that were donated by ASU. I think we had 42 solar panels. We took those to the reservation. The houses on the reservation are not necessarily on the grid. As you can see here, they’re spaced very far apart. It would be prohibitively expensive to connect them to the grid so there needs to be another solution if they’re to have electricity and some other modern conveniences.

The Navajo live in houses and also hogans. We were fortunate to be able to be invited into the hogans, into the homes, and the students actually lived with the families during their stay on the reservation. We got a briefing. There’s Mark Snyder in the middle. We got a briefing every day on what the tasks were of the day, how we were going to install solar power on these sites, on these homes of elderly Navajos. We checked out the solar panels to make sure they were working. We washed off the dust from them sitting in the APS storage lot over here in Tempe, and we proceeded to install them by the houses.

Most of the work I think was ditch digging. I’m not sure the students realized they were going north to dig ditches, but that’s what it turned out to be, and they all had fantastic attitudes about it and gained some strength and a nice suntan at the same time. They also got to use a jackhammer. They also mixed cement, concrete, and they started to erect the frames. The frame looks like this. It holds several solar panels, and they installed the solar panels along with the help of some folks from Navajo Technical College in Crownpoint, New Mexico. It holds five solar panels.

Mark and Elsa and Michael can tell you the exact wattage of voltage, things like that, which they know much more about than I do, and also how they connect to the house and what they provide, what modern conveniences they allow the house to have, not only electricity, but also hot water and some other advantages. Here’s an example of the solar panels next to a house on the reservation. Notice they’ve covered up the ditch, but there is a ditch that goes from that solar panel all the way back to the house. They were able to live with the Navajo elders which was a fantastic experience. They had fantastic hospitality. This is Dan’s wife, Jenny, who was the chef for the group when we were all together, but when they were spread out to the Navajo homes, they all ate in the Navajo homes and they had fantastic food and just a great time.

They had some experiences they didn’t expect to have and they wouldn’t have here in the Tempe campus like sheep-shearing for example. The sheep looks totally fine, peaceful sorta, or asleep, one of the two. I’m not sure. It was a great experience, and that’s sort of an overview of sorta the 40,000 foot level of what we did, but for more detail, I’d like to introduce Elsa Johnson. Let me tell you a little bit about Elsa. She’s director of IINA Solutions. She’s a business development consultant, and she’s a cultural advisor. She’s director of IINA Solutions, a nonprofit humanitarian organization she established to help improve the quality of life.

Quality of life in Navajo is iina. Iina means quality of life for underserved rural Navajo elders challenged by a lack of basic human need through renewable energy and holistic solutions. In 2011, January, she launched Plateau Solar, the first alternative infrastructure project in Indian country bringing solar electricity, water, and sanitation to disadvantaged off-grid Navajo elders. Her solar project featured and was featured in the Gallup Independent, The Navajo Times, The Navajo Hopi Observer, The Arizona Daily Star, and worldwide Solar Novus Online Magazine, and was a feature story in The Arizona Republic in 2011.

Previously, Elsa would manage the business development for two large construction companies. She was a consultant and location supervisor on the Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I don’t know if you saw the Extreme Makeover Home Edition that was on Navajo reservation through—and she introduced two Southwest tribal cultures to the world through the Piestewa and the Yazzie Makeover episodes. Elsa coproduced Life on an Indian Reservation episode with Academy Award nominees Morgan Spurlock and Isabel Vega for the FX Network. She has a Fine Arts Degree from ASU, and she also serves on the GlobalResolve advisory board. Elsa, we’re looking forward to your presentation.

Elsa Johnson: Thank you. I am Navajo, and we are the largest tribe. We have over 300,000 members, and about half of them still live on the reservation. There’s a good number of us that are all off reservation in these urban areas, and I grew up without electricity and running water. My grandmothers never, ever complained, and it was just a daily thing. I have lived in Chicago for ten years, and I’ve enjoyed really nice suburban lifestyle and also lived five years in San Diego. I have now been living here for almost 15 years, and when I go back, I keep seeing very little has changed. That really tugged at my heart, and so when I get an opportunity to help people, I think my grandparents really lived that life for me, and they were always helping folks.

When I had an opportunity, well, I freelance with Extreme Makeover every so often, and the second time was with the Yazzie house. They wanted to build a first green Navajo hogan, but the problem they had there was they got the wrong contractor. I didn’t know that until everything had been already finalized. At any rate, to make a long story short, that’s where I met my solar partner, my project partner, Mark Snyder. He is an expert in solar energy, and he has a real huge heart. He’s very compassionate, and he wants to help people. I think that’s where we really connected, and we saw—I mean they saw, the Extreme Makeover team saw huge needs up there. Before he left, he said, “We need to do something. One day, I’ll be back.” We kept in touch and kept in touch. We wanna do something in the green area as far as clean energy.

At any rate, we explored a couple other situations. One of them was the extreme over the huge problem with trash up there too, but we decided to go ahead and join forces on the solar project, and we were able to pull together $800,000.00. 25 percent came from USDA and—no, no. Yes, 25 percent from USDA. 75 percent from Renewable Energy Investment Funds that was won by Grand Canyon Trust through a lawsuit against Springerville power plant. I tried, desperately tried to get matching funds from the tribe, but it’s just the tribal red tape. It’s probably equivalent to the federal red tape. It was very, very difficult so we were so limited.

That caused me to go out and look for partners, and that’s how I went over to the Navajo Technical College. They really couldn’t help us, and then so last December, I wrote a support letter for this grant that this is how ASU got involved, but we started way back, back in 2010. This is the Navajo Generating Station on Navajo, and what really, really drives me, and then my solar partner, is the fact that we are so dependent. Navajo is so dependent on fossil fuels, and I really would like to see us transition. This is where all of Arizona, Las Vegas, and southern California gets their very inexpensive electricity.

This coal comes from my land, my community, which I live about 15, 20 miles from the Peabody Coal Company, and so all of this is really the back. I guess the foundation of all of this is my concern for my people because we endure heavy, heavy health impacts, environmental impacts. Our water, Navajo aquifer, is the most pristine water on this side of the Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. It is Ice Age water, and yet, Navajo Generating Station and Peabody uses it for industrial use. That’s what really bothers me, and so I think one stack is 750 megawatts. I say I think Arizona really should—if we would do a solar farm, we could make up one stack.

I mean those are things that I would love to see, and so this is—that’s what drives me. I’m from the first red dot up there or across. I’m from that community up there called Forest Lake, and then the second red dot is where the coal is—I mean the generating station is. Then, of course, the coal also moves the Colorado River, lifts the Colorado River, and then 372 miles is the cap canals. We all have water down here, and then we have 20,000 Navajos still living without running water or electricity. We put together Plateau Solar. We really actually started in August 10.

We started taking applications for the elders. They can’t read or write, and then it was USDA application, 24 pages. Those questions do not even fit the people. It was very arduous, but I was able to translate all of that information, and we hired two Navajo clerks. They did our intakes. We were down to an hour per person. Initially, it was taking three hours to fill out one application. Then, at the same time, Mark and I, I told Mark. I said, “This is the lifestyle. I remember we’re having to haul water at least three times a week for domestic and for the livestock.” Then, we don’t have—everybody still uses wood-burning stoves, and so I said, “Nothing really has changed.”

I said, “I don’t want us just to put a one-kilowatt system up and walk away. We need to do better.” He’s the brain behind all of this. He’s just a genius, and so we ended up designing a two-kilowatt system and it’s comprehensive. By that, I mean not only is it solar electricity, but also water. We included a 500-gallon water tank that is gonna—well, we plumb into the home, and also, the other thing is most places do not have toilets. They have outhouses. I said, “I want all encompassing. I want everything.” I said, “Imagine to be 85 years old. It’s the dead of winter, cold, and you’re sick. You’re having to stumble around outside to an outhouse. We need to do better.”

These are all elders that are low and no income, and so of course, they have to be 62 and over. We had enough money for 37 systems, and so this is our first pilot project. It was freezing when we put all of this in, and Mark created this building. It includes the 500-gallon water tank. Oh, dear. Anyhow, if you can read over here, that’s what everything is included in this building, and then these are the hot-air panels so they don’t have to keep burning wood all winter long. Of course, this is before and after. This is the compost toilet, and then that’s how we—the Navajo folks without running water get their water every day.

Then, this is the interior of that building. Here’s a hot water heater, and then the 500-gallon water tank. I know when we hooked this up that day, it was like 20 degrees outside. After it got going, it was blowing in 82 degrees or 81 rather. This is everything that we’re doing is we’re benefiting the folks. They finally get to store their medication and really shift their eating habits to more healthy, better foods, and they don’t have to keep going to the grocery store every so often because they had to drive like 50 miles one way most places and then 70 miles in some places. These are all the benefits that we have brought. They get to shower. I mean not all of them.

This is phase three. We don’t have enough money for phase three right now. We’re only at phase one, and so this is an interior of one of the homes. We save them fuel costs from running back and forth to go to the store to buy wood. A truckload of wood is $140, just one, and they need at least four or five of that to get them through the winter. It improves indoor air quality, and we really pampered our batteries. The ones we saw, we did a really good research before we put this whole program together. We pamper our batteries. Most batteries are just left outside in a metal box, and you only get a year or two use out of this. We designed a system to last 20 to 25 years.

This is the hogan that we were gonna connect the building to, but then the hogan we found out was made out of railroad ties. That stopped us because that’s pretty toxic, and we made sure that everything that we design has to meet at least—I mean be able to withstand 130 mile per hour winds and the dust. This is our demo project. We didn’t realize that it was gonna be all four days of jack hammering. It’s all rock bed, and that’s the reason why folks don’t have running water or electricity because some of the places that they live. They’re off-grid. This is the woman that got the system, her family in the front, and then us in the back there. We did a housewarming party for her.

We modified the whole building to—we attached it to the house now because it’s more cost-efficient that way, and it still comes with everything, but this is phase one. Phase one is all of this in here. We have a tracking system. Tracking system you can garner at least 40 percent more energy. That’s how we arrive at two kilowatt, and so we’re trying to find monies for phase two and three. This is basically we used local folks. I mean their own relatives of the elders, their adult children, and we’re pouring the concrete here. We mixed everything by hand, and that’s a 500-gallon water tank. Goodness.

We tried to match the house with the bump out. We call it a bump out, and then this is the P2000, our insulation, and inside the building, it is so airtight and it’s so warm. It’s cool in the summer too because—look at the roads that we had to travel, and some of the students there are helping us. The students came out for two weeks and helped us, but we’ve been doing this for since last December. These are just some photo—these are our elders. We meet with them and give them updates every so often, and this is everything. This is all of the advantages that our project is bringing. I don’t know of another solar project that is doing this or is even capable of doing.

We really, really went through great, great strides to make sure that we build a durable system that will last because up there, the elements are extreme. ASU was wonderful. They gave us 44 panels, and they gave us 2 weeks of students helping us. That’s how we got to know Mike Funk, and we were looking for funds for more units because like I said. We had 20,000 folks still living without electricity. I told these guys. I said, “There’s some situations that are far worse than the ones that we were able to—we worked at.” I think with that I’ll wrap up.

Mark Henderson: Thank you, Elsa. Are you guys gonna do tag team? Are you together or—

Michael Funk: I’ll start and then—

Mark Henderson: Okay. Alright. I’ll introduce the next two speakers together since they’re gonna do their presentation together. Michael Funk is a graduate student at ASU working as a research assistant on the Plateau Solar Project Grant for which he applied and was granted. He’s the one who wrote the application proposal. Michael attended ASU Polytechnic for his Bachelor’s degree and holds an Associated Applied Science Degree in Electron Microscopy. His background includes nearly 20 years in engineering and experience in electron microscopy working both for OEM companies and various private sector companies. He’s been published, and he holds a U.S. patent.

He spent the last two summers working at NASA Langley, NASA Kennedy Space Center in Langley. He’s set to graduate this December with a Master’s of Science in Alternative Energy Technology and plans to continue his Ph.D. at College of William and Mary to develop electric chemical energy storage solutions. Michael, you’ll start off, but then I also wanna tell you a little bit about Mark Snyder. Mark is committed to the creation of a sustainable future and has been recognized worldwide as an expert on evolving alternative energy technologies and applications. He’s a master electrician. He’s a forensic electrical specialist. He’s an inventor and officer in a publicly listed energy company, and has been a commercial organic gardener for 30 years, a wide diversity of talents and interests.

He owns Mark Snyder Electric is a contracting in southern California. His work has been the object of TV and other media. He’s been on Jon Stewart, Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and he was the contractor on the first episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition on the Navajo Nation. Some of his many accomplishments include he designed and installed southern California’s first large-scale bio-energy conversion project in San Diego County. He created and manufactured 320 solar-powered mobile water purification systems for the ministry in Iraq, provided solar electricity, solar-distilled clean water, and water pressure domestic solar hot water, and communications for remote villages in the Free Republic of Sudan in North Africa.

Just this past summer, he traveled to Germany and Nigeria in response to a request for assistance from the governor of the Nigerian state of Adamawa, Nigeria to develop a municipal solid waste to electrical energy resource in the state’s capital city. In December 2011, he started the Solar Plateau Project for 37 off-grid elders as you heard for water storage, solar-powered water pressure, solar hot water space heating and cooling, electrical plumbing, gas safety inspection, and high-efficiency modular structures to house systems. We look forward to hearing from both of you. Thanks for being here. Michael, you wanna start off?

Michael Funk: Mark, did you know that Jon Stewart was an alumnus from William and Mary?

Mark Snyder: No.

Michael Funk: Yeah. Anyway, what brings me here was kind of a life-long interest in solar energy. I grew up in one of the first passive solar homes in North America, and actually back in the ‘70s, my stepfather was involved with people like Mark and the people that we got the trackers from, the gentleman who started Zomeworks. Having grown up in a passive solar home, I always was interested in energy and things like that. My first experiences brought me to ASU to get a degree in alternative energy, and that was my Bachelor’s degree. The last two summers working at NASA, I made connections, which allowed me to be privy to a Department of Energy initiative through ASUS, which involved partnering with Navajo Technical College and ASU as Dan had described to write a grant in order to get monies for my Master’s project.

The gentleman was from AHEC, and he related to me that there was funds available for anyone who wanted to get involved in a solar project that involved tribal entities, in which case if you look at this poster, it kinda gives you the timeline of what had occurred. We started by writing off—by writing the grant proposal, Dan and I, and then we also had help from Ray Griego up at Navajo Technical College. He wrote and put in his two cents’ worth, and we submitted the proposal and were granted the money. That led us on a cold, blustery, wintery, blizzardy day up to NTC. We braved the elements, and that’s the picture with Elsa right there.

We actually had to drive through the mountains to avoid the bad snow. It gives you an idea. I mean they had closed Highway 40, but we made it up there. The next thing we did was we came up with a game plan. The game plan then, if you look at the GlobalResolve poster here we made up, was that we were gonna partner with GlobalResolve and Mark Henderson. He was able to provide us with volunteers, people who were interested in taking part in this project, and so myself and Mark and Dan and a bunch of people put this all together. We worked really hard to get 20 kids actually boarded the bus, as you saw in that first picture.

I would like to also extend a special thanks to Bill David, the pastor up at Grand Falls Bible Church. He allowed us and the 20 students—whoops, sorry—to stay in this little building right here which had a kitchen and a room and gave us a place where we could bring the students, and they could have a place to sleep. We’d also like to give thanks to A. V. Arthur and Vicky Zavala and all the Navajo ladies who helped out Dan’s wife in providing meals for us. Of course, the same picture. There’s Dan’s wife right there. She made the whole process really worthwhile for the students.

Working digging ditches is not much fun. I don’t know how many of you have done it, but it’s hard work. These kids, I’m so proud of them. They didn’t complain. They worked hard all day, and the one thing that they always could count on was coming back and having a decent meal that was cooked by Dan’s wife. There we are enjoying it. These is, of course, mutton and fry bread with corn onions and potatoes which is just typical Navajo fare. To me, I was just as happy with this. I mean I learned how to say, “I’m hungry” in Navajo so that I could get this once in a while. Basically, here’s a layout of the early planning that we did. This was prior to actually going on the trip, and it covers all kinds of information on what we were gonna do, what was needed to do it, and such information like that.

The result of which was this ASU course, OMT 494, which I think you can also do in HON, which is through the honors college. Basically, it outlines what the students would need, topics, what to bring along, and what to expect. Now, here’s our onsite safety training. This is an example of what not to do. Some of you might have recognized Dr. Kannan there. Luepp, Arizona on the Navajo Nation, this was typically—this is typically how they live. I mean here you see the hogan and their sheep, and I mean there’s little else out there. It’s located—the Navajo Nation is actually 20,000 square miles that encompasses this area, mostly in Arizona and parts of northern New Mexico.

It’s desolate, as you can see. It’s dry. Dry as a bone when we were up there. I actually had taken a measurement at five percent humidity. Here’s where we actually took part in the installations with the students. Flagstaff is right here. It’s about 30, 40 miles from Flagstaff is where the church is at. Here you see we’re a group. We’re all clean, kind of stiff, looking good and proud. If any of you get a chance, I encourage you to walk up and take a look at that picture right there. That’s the after picture. We go from being a group to a team. Now, that’s team. That’s after two weeks teamwork is what you end up becoming.

I think some of you have seen this picture already. Same thing, we’re at the bone yard picking up the panels, washing them, cleaning them, testing them. We actually gathered the data on each panel, the serial numbers, and the open circuit voltage for each one. That’s our field expedient method. Here, of course, is the information after it’s been moved into an Excel spreadsheet. The panels, of course, were—we have to provide a certain amount of kudos to all the sponsors, the people who provided the monies and the panels and what not in support of the Plateau Project and also in support of GlobalResolve.

The students from GlobalResolve, of course, they were fed meals. They were driven up there, and the grant that I wrote supported the GlobalResolve students. Then, we all together supported the Plateau Project, and the Plateau Project, of course, has been going on for far longer than what we just—what we contributed. However, I’m sure if you ask any of the students, they’ll tell you they were quite proud, and we are quite proud of them for their contribution. Just a few more pictures. There’s Mark Henderson and Mark Snyder and Dr. Kennan and a bunch of the students. Here’s an example of the ditch digging. I was very impressed at how straight they were able to make that ditch considering how hard that ground was, very impressive.

Then, there’s the other side of it, still straight. Amazing, truly amazing. Did a great job. This was not as straight, but you run into rocks and things that prevent you from making them as perfect as you’d like them to be. Notice the students are wearing their safety helmets. Okay. They didn’t always. I used to—I had to keep on them for that, but it was tough to work up there in that environment, and wearing a hat like that was quite hot, but Hyejung, who you’ll hear from within a few minutes, here is an example of the work she did. She’s both jack hammering and helping to put up the array.

At this point, I’m gonna turn the mike over to Mark. One of the things I had to do in order to both write grants and to participate as a research assistant was get CITI certification, and this is a requirement. It’s also very important because some of the things I learned by taking the courses that are involved here was how to be responsible in your research methods and how to behave responsibly when you’re dealing with groups of people. There was quite a bit of information that they shared in which I had to take courses for. It’s definitely a part of it. One of the things was cultural sensitivity up there. Elsa took the time to kinda clue us in on what the dos and don’ts are, and this was also part of the feature of the course that was given prior to the students going.

Now, there’s two things that keep these projects sustainable from the Department of Energy’s point of view, and they’re the people that give money when it comes down to it. The USDA loans, all those loans are coming from one pot of money, and it’s coming from the government. Then, it gets ferreted out to different departments, and the two things that they’re really interested in. They wanna know what are the educational outcomes. In other words, who’s learning what? Are people going to school? Especially for tribal colleges, and two, job formation. In order for these projects to be sustainable, that’s what they wanna see. When they see that, then they pour more money into it.

Year after year, you’re able to sustain a project like this by showing them that that’s what you’re doing. There was ancient Anasazi pottery shards all on this hillside, and I mean they were just gorgeously decorated and colorful as if they were made just yesterday, but yet, nobody touched them because the locals wouldn’t touch them. Once again, interfacing with the locals. I didn’t get a chance to shear sheep. I’m a little disappointed. At this point, I’m gonna hand the mike over to Mark. Mark Snyder, folks.

Mark Snyder: Well, first thing I wanna say is we really appreciate and thank ASU and Department of Energy and GlobalResolve for the help on the project. We made major headway in meeting our goals. We actually have, out of the 37 elders, we actually have 31 with their power on and their lives changed forever right now which is wonderful. They helped put us probably a month ahead of schedule by assisting us so we really appreciate it, and please give them a big hand right now for their help for Dan and Mike and Navajo Technical College, too. I don’t think anyone’s here from Navajo Technical today, but we really appreciate their help, too.

I was very fortunate. I descend from five generations of farmers, farming families, and we grew up doing construction work and growing things. Unfortunately, I am the first generation organic farmer. Unfortunately, the other two generations that were involved in farming were chemical farmers, and one of the things that really helped me develop compassion for people, especially suffering people, is my family suffers from a legacy of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and other issues from cancer.

In 1985—well, I grew up spring DDT and putting injecting chemical fertilizer into our fertilizer systems, and I remember sitting on the lap of my beloved grandfather probably about six months before he passed away of multiple myeloma and carcinoma. He was saying he had this terrible metal taste in his mouth you know like similar to metal. It was mercury, mercury and arsenic and things that came from the poisons that we put on the food that everybody else is eating and people continue to eat right now today in chemical pesticides, fertilizers and pesticides. Pretty much petroleum was in almost everything that we put on those crops from the fertilizer to the early emergent sprays that we put on the fruit trees and on the corn fields.

I grew up in southern California, and we had a truck farm there where we raised mainly walnuts and peaches and nectarines and citrus and persimmons. Persimmons one of my favorite, and my family used to farm me out to the major farming endeavors back in Iowa where I go back and work on the 1,000-acre farms and spray and work with the combines and different things like that. Fortunately, I didn’t die from the cancer. I had cancer in 1985, multiple myeloma and was just about goners. I got into—became a vegetarian in 1968 and then got into natural healing.

Actually, I have a degree in physical therapy, and I had pre-med and medical training. Spent about nine years as a physical therapist, but my mother passed away from cancer at the age of 53, the same cancer I had. My father had a kidney removed, and three of my brothers have had blood cancer, all of us from the legacy of those chemicals. I developed a tremendous compassion for suffering people all over the world, and through industrialization, we’ve spread petroleum. We’ve spread poisons all over the globe, and the Navajo—very little known fact is that the Navajos continue to suffer the results of the Cold War. The results are there are 2,500 uranium mining sites on the Navajo Nation.

In Loop area, in particular, there’s a spring that almost every one of our elders and their children and their children’s children have drank from, and the insidious thing is there’s a mine just up the hill from that spring. What’s incredibly insidious is that water tastes sweet. It makes the best coffee that they say in all of Navajo, and there’s a big sign up there now. It’s only put up there what? I think about six years ago. About six years ago, one of the things that attracted us first to the Loop area was a project for cleaning up the water. Then, we met with a scientist, a medical scientist from [inaudible] University. We went out and tested this water, and also tested within 20 feet of the elders’ homes that lives in this area.

There’s a pile of hot uranium tailings that is as hot as a dirty nuke. I have a Geiger counter that I carry around with me, and so these folks, these elders that we’re dealing with are what’s called downwinders. Also, they drank the water, and the amount of cancer and heart disease and liver and kidney failure out there is just enormous. These folks mine these mines, and they were paid reparations from the U.S. government all the people that died in the mines, but nothing’s been done. 500 of the mines were sealed up, some by Bush, some by Reagan, and some by Carter, but there are 2,000 sites left on Navajo Nation. The ones that were sealed up, they did not reprocess all those tailings and get them out of there.

One of our major parts of this project that we really had to convince the REIF, the Renewable Energy Investment Fund, that’s three of the state’s utilities. We had to convince them not to put in a flaky solar system, what I call flaky solar system. I’m German, and things have to be right. The TUV Rheinland is my kind of idea of a good partner. One of the issues was putting in the water tanks, and we just had to fight tooth and nail to get them to cooperate with us to put in the water tanks as we wanted to get them off of 90 percent of the wells in the area that they were drinking water from were polluted with uranium or with arsenic or mercury. We got them off of the—these 37 elders are now off of this water onto certified water.

The solar system, we had a company back in Missouri I think. We designed a special pump to pump the water so that they have 60 PSI water at 5 gallons a minute. They can take showers. It can go through a water heater, and you have standard water pressure in the houses. This is very important to us to get them off of that water cuz that’s part of the cure and one of the things that we really want to do and we’re looking for people to help us with is to do prophylactic treatment on these elders. We are associated with a scientist, a Russian scientist, who treated the victims of Chernobyl very successfully with patented microalgae treatment that helps chelate the poison out of their system.

One of the reasons I’m still alive is I had live cell treatment in Germany and also had 50 intravenous chelation treatments. I found a really good set of doctors in Europe that helped me get the mercury and the poisons out of my system so I’m alive to talk about it to help other people today. Thank God. Anyway, this project was very important to us cuz we could see the people were suffering on many different levels, and the Navajo elders we were working with were literally living in the late 1800s with kerosene lamps and with getting the smoke from the kerosene and the lamp oil in the houses. Many of the houses were dilapidated and need the help which USDA is cooperating with us to try to help them, and they’ve been really underserved.

They go to the stores, pay taxes. They pay taxes on their fuel. They pay taxes at grocery store, and they live on ancestral land which they own, but basically kind of own because it’s like a condo. The Bureau of Indian Affairs I guess owns the land, and they live on it. They pass this on. The project was very important to us to get right. We studied other installations. Many contractors have been up there in the past and installed panels, and they failed. I’m very particular about designs, and we wanted to design a system that would last 25 or 30 years. We designed the EMPUS. I don’t know where it is here. Let’s see.

This is the solar panels. The students helped us put the panels up, and they dug the ditches for us. The building, the EMPUS was designed originally for a project in the Sudan, and I redesigned it for Navajo Nation so that the system would withstand the cold. It’s heated with a solar thermal hot air panel, and we built it really tight with P2000 insulation that’s R28 per inch. We insulated the floor so the water tank inside the building acts like a trammel and helps heat the building. It was very important for us to make it airtight, withstand the elements, and produce sufficient power to run appliances and things in the house.

Let’s see. We’ll go—this is the EMPUS material list, basically what’s inside of it. This is phase one, and then let’s see. NTC assisted us, and then this is inverter inside. Let’s see. Let’s get to where Mike can take over here. These are the components inside the e-panel and the inverter and lightning control. This is the certificate we gave our wonderful helpers for helping us, all the students at ASU, which we really deeply appreciate. Then, here’s—I’ll hand it back to Mike. Basically, this is the weather station. Mike, you wanna…

Michael Funk: Yeah. One of the aspects of the project was to collect data. This we owed to—or at least my portion of the grant owed to the DEO and AHEC and ASUS, and what I did was I installed a anemometer with the weather station, which is solar-powered and wireless. Here is an example of the EMPUS that Mark described. It’s got the solar thermal, which serves to heat the whole house, quite frankly, because there’s a big water tank right in here, and that serves as a big thermal storage reservoir. There’s fans that then pump that warm air into the house.

We mounted a—you know this thing right on a pole so we could collect weather data. Those controllers that you saw a few back here, right here. This is the midnight controller and a camelback inverter where you take the electricity coming off the panels, and then it gets routed both into the house and into the battery system. This controller right here also has the capability of data logging. I’m taking data off of both the solar array that has to do with the batteries, that has to do with the array, the power, and the energy, as well as the temperature of the batteries.

What we’re looking at is we’re looking at finding a combination of processes and materials and equipment that we can put together that will—we can then, with a degree of intelligence, tell other people, “Look. If you’re doing an installation like this on native lands or in this type of environment, here’s what we recommend you do because we’ve already done sort of the work and we’ve got the data to back it up.” The data that we get from the weather, as well as off the array, is very important information, and of course, it’s a little wireless unit that then takes information into this, which has an amazing amount of information, all kinds of different heat indexes, temperature indexes.

I’ve also attached in a radiation sensor and a UV sensor. It looks at how much of a dose can you get up there before you start getting a sunburn depending on what your skin type is. I mean this thing is amazing. The software is really, really quite comprehensive, and here’s an example, the UV and the solar sensors, the way they’re attached. I actually have them mounted on the front now because I came up with a few issues. These were the specifications for that unit, just pages and pages. I mean it does an amazing amount of stuff. One of the things that Mark discovered—was that in Iraq that you first discovered the—

Mark Synder: No, actually southern California.

Michael Funk: In southern California, they also have very dry conditions, and one of the things Mark discovered was that you need to have a really good earth ground. If you don’t have a good earth ground connected to these arrays, then what happens is lightning strikes them and takes them out. It’s very important to have a good earth ground. His idea is I think that there’s patent pending on it. Here’s the one that’s right on next to the array is he’s got drip emitters that then put water next to the grounding rod right here, and it forms a column of moisture all the way down to where the earth ground exists.

This is a very important aspect to why Mark’s system is a little hardier than just your average system, and Elsa was explaining to you folks about the importance of keeping the batteries in good condition. They last a lot longer if you put them in an environmentally-controlled box. Here you can see a conduit that’s pumping air through it to keep it warm. In the wintertime, those batteries are kept just right. They’re not hot. They’re not too cool. They’re just right, and it makes all the difference in terms of their life. Now, here’s a little bit of data that came from the weather station. I started seeing some strange stuff going on, and this is a plot of solar radiation in watts per meter squared.

As you can see, we’re getting up to 1,000 watts per meter squared. Up there on the Navajo Nation, I mean it’s very clear. The air is clear in terms of you don’t have a lot of smog or things like that that create a reduction in that number, but I said, “Well, okay. What’s the problem?” What I discovered was that this pole was shiny, and I was getting reflection hitting the detectors right here. I’m actually writing a paper on the type of flaws you run into when you do a research project like this. This is what had occurred. I ended up going up last weekend—or the weekend before actually, and putting up a non-reflective surface and then moving the detectors out farther away from that pole, which alleviated the problem, but there’s—here’s an example of solar radiation and solar energy.

What’s interesting to note is that it’s in langleys. I don’t know if you know what a langley is, but it’s the energy required to take one gram of water and increase—or one gram calorie per centimeter squared and raise it one degree, but this gives you an example of some of the energy that we’re getting. I mean this is up at 575 so that’s quite a bit. Then, the other stuff you can learn by using the anemometer and comparing the data is that on rain days, notice after it rained heavily how clear the air was. Here’s 1,000 watts per meter squared. Notice this day we actually went up above it, and according to Mark, we can expect to see—what did you say? 14 to 1,600. 14 to 1,600 watts per meter squared we can get off the array in the wintertime.

Anyway, the idea is to collect and correlate the data between the midnight solar controller, the David weather system, and then finally, reporting back to these entities for more funding. There it is. That’s what we’re gonna do there. This was a picture that Dan took actually, and this was Dan’s office while we were up there. Apparently, it was on this mesa and it was the only place where you could actually get good reception on your cell phone. Now, here’s the scary part is that that thing was already sitting there. That’s the office. Anyway, I think now we’re gonna open the—

Mark Henderson: Oh, Hyejung.

Michael Funk: Oh, that’s right. I guess you’re gonna introduce Hyejung.

Mark Henderson: Thank you, Michael, and thank you, Mark. Next, we have Hyejung Lim. She is a senior in the School of Sustainability and the Honors College, Barrett, the Honors College. She is currently a consultant for the New Venture Group, a multidisciplinary consulting group at ASU. She also serves as ambassador for the School of Sustainability and a write for The Barrett Chronicle. Last semester, she worked for Dell as a sustainability assistant. Hyejung is gonna tell you about the student view of the experience while on the Plateau Solar Project. Hyejung, thank you.

Hyejung Lim: Hi. I was one of the about 20 students I think went there, and I have some pictures. We already showed some, but I have some extra, and I’m just gonna talk about the experience. You already saw this portion, and so I was there and digging like we really didn’t expect to dig a lot. I think almost half the time we were there, we were just digging and digging, but that was really essential part. It was as important as the putting the actual solar panel up there. It was really great. It was really hot. We were there like for several hours, and we got—we brought some water, but that wasn’t really enough.

We really had a good experience because I was—before I went there, I was learning about like solar—I mean energy and all that in the different sustainability classes, but it was just what you see in the textbooks. It was really—I was really grateful to be there actually doing the real work, not just what I saw in the textbooks. It was really great, and let’s see. That was another digging part. I wasn’t in that group, but they had to use the camera a lot. It was really deep too like the one I had was I just used a shovel. That was it. That was another one, and after we dig, we put the water pipe in there.

Then, we also had to do the wiring, and you can see the outhouse like I never had to use an outhouse before. I live in the city. I’m from Seoul, Korea so it was a pretty modern city, and it was really interesting to use the outhouse. That was just another experience, too. Yes. That’s another putting up the frames for the solar panels, and the solar panel was pretty heavy. I didn’t wanna break it. I had to let the guys move the things cuz it was pretty expensive. The value was expensive, and so it was really great to actually—it looks really simple to put those like solar panels on there, but we had to like measure like if you put it slightly like off of the measurement, it can really fall. There can be long strong winds and then—so it took hours to put the measure, how to put those like frames on there.

Then, so it looked simple, but if you’re trying to do it, it really takes a lot of time. It was a really good experience to do that so that’s the view from the bottom, and those are little part like you screw it and like—yeah. It just takes a lot of effort, and so that was our picture after we did a lot of the work. You can’t really see, but you can see from our faces like pretty filled with dust, and like we are really pretty tired at the end of the two weeks. But we had a really great experience, and so I was doing some like the nailing part too because we had severe [inaudible]. This part, it was like all the [inaudible] solar, the trucking system that the—sorry—Mike showed.

I was building this part on here, and it was another one of our students that went there. She was the main person help out the construction part, and I was just there for one day, but she was there with the pastor, Bill. He was also like doing—he was the main person doing all the construction work, and he was—he’s like a partner, and she was really good. That’s her doing the construction part and putting up the glue gun there. I was up there on there so it was pretty scary cuz it was like up there high, and I didn’t wanna fall, but it was really fun to do the construction part, too. It was there me and the pastor, Bill, here and his assistant, and like it’s the same picture that he shared [inaudible].

It’s inside of the church so [inaudible] that we were getting food. Oh, and we were eating there. I really appreciated like Dan’s wife, Jenny. It was really great food like at the end of the day. We were just so tired, and then the just food was really great. We slept there like that, and it was really great, the experience like bonding. Like after two weeks, we were just like best friends there, and so it’s there we were talking and by the end of the day, we just share our experience about what you did because if you were divided up into like three or four different teams. About two to three people or like five work in the same house, and I stayed in an elder’s house for like a few days. It was just really great to talk to them like the family that I stayed with.

I mean the old lady didn’t speak English, but the old man, he did. I was able to communicate with his wife through him, and it was really great just to see how—hear about how they live. I was really shocking that they had to like get water from like far out just—it was just crazy, and then just from their house to our church, it took like over 30 minutes driving a really bumpy road. It was really—

Male Voice: That’s an understatement.

Hyejung Lim: It was really crazy, and it was really interesting. It was just us there inside of the church, and it’s another Jenny’s picture. This is like a hill, and then this area was the only area near the church we can get reception for the cell phone. We call this hill as a reception mountain because every night, we got there and then get connected with the real world because we didn’t have any cell phone signal there. We went up there every night to get connected with our family and boyfriend, girlfriend, all that. We were in the Flagstaff for I think one or two days.

We had really good fun, and it was like the best pizza in Flagstaff apparently. It was really great. We had a great time there besides doing the project just hang out. It’s just another view of the reservation, and yeah. Then, the outhouse in the sunset. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. That’s all the pictures I have, and I will give it—hand it to Mark.

Mark Henderson: Thanks, Hyejung. We had a real international group of students. You can help me out with we had Korea. We had China, South Africa, Vietnam, Zambia, Mexico, Hopi. Real international group of students. China. China. South America. Yes. It was a great group of students. What I’d like to do now is bring four chairs up here if you could and act like a panel, and if you wanna ask some questions of the group, feel free to do that. As we’re organizing, you might think of some questions you wanna ask. Kim, can you hit the B, the letter B on the—just hit B on the keyboard. Thanks.