A noble cause for a river turbine

The SMART Turbine is transportable and affordable enough to be implemented in isolated rural communities, ones who rely on diesel generators to get a few hours of electricity in a day or, even worse, haven't seen electricity at all for decades.

Smart Hydro Power is a start-up in Feldafing, Germany, active since 2010 developing a renewable power source through a kinetic hydro turbine that only uses the river's water flow energy to generate electricity without harming the environment. The SMART Turbine is transportable and affordable enough to be implemented in isolated rural communities, ones who rely on diesel generators to get a few hours of electricity in a day or, even worse, haven't seen electricity at all for decades. One turbine generates up to 5Kw, which is enough to power ten households, including their fridge and their television.


A new initiative by Smart Hydro Power relates to the village of Marisol, in Peru. Marisol is a small community that lives through its cocoa plantation. Through their motivation and hard work, the people in Marisol have a developing business model that could provide a future for coming generations of the community.

This could be made in an environmental-friendly- way.

Smart Hydro Power thus developed a concept to implement a hybrid system - the SMART Turbine combined with photovoltaic cells for daily peaks - in order to give this business model a gigantic boost. Better yet, they see it as a possibility to re-think the entire business model for much faster development and instant delivery of a better quality of life for this highly-motivated community.

In order to achieve this goal, Smart Hydro Power launched an Indiegogo campaign, with the goal of 35'000,00€ allowing for the turbine and the photovoltaic system to be implemented without cost to the Marisol community. Within minutes, donations started to come in only through our own social networking and manual spreading of the word.

There are interesting perks to be gathered, even for smaller donations. For donations over 5'000,00€, backers are even given a prototype of Smart Hydro Power's new turbine, something that no tech-lover should go without.

More interestingly, though, is that this initiative is the start of something much bigger. Smart Hydro Power already possesses the technology and know-how to deliver on that promise, only not the financial resources to do so voluntarily, since a lot of R&D costs were put into developing the system already. Should the goal be reached or surpassed, similar projects for other isolated communities will most definitely be started in short time.

Even for those who cannot or will not chip in, I ask to spread the word further. The people of Marisol, as well as future isolated communities to receive electrical power, will be very thankful.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNMTjyyCPs&list=UU1mSQ8riNGghL_iKW_OuDUQ

IndieGoGo - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/enlightening-the-future-of-rural-communities

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