Stevens EWB Chapter in ASCE Newsletter

Stevens' Engineers Without Borders student chapter was featured in the December newsletter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) North Jersey Branch:

Examples of types of challenging and inspiring projects that are taken on by EWB chapters can be found locally at the Stevens and NJIT student chapters. EWBSIT is currently in the process of finalizing the design for a micro-hydro electric generator, to be constructed in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic. The Jarabacoa community of El Dulce includes sixtyfive homes and one schoolhouse that currently have no source of electricity. Together with the Obra Social Salesiana (OSS), a local NGO, EWB-SIT is working to alleviate this problem by bring electrical power to the community.

EWB-SIT has already sent several students to the Jarabacoa to meet with the community and an engineer, who is an expert at designing micro hydroelectric systems in the area. While in the community, the EWBSIT team scouted a location for the systems and assessed the feasibility of providing adequate power. After the assessment trip, a feasibility study was conducted on the chosen system location to determine the characteristics of the water source, survey the surrounding land, and determine the potential power output. The Stevens team worked with the OSS and local engineers to create a design for the system components, which include: intake, penstock, powerhouse, turbine-generator, and control system. The EWB-SIT team has reached 80% of their fundraising goals for this project and currently they are finalizing design calculations so that a power generating turbine can be selected and ordered for the community. After the turbine is ordered a project team will travel to Jarabacoa to install the equipment and bring electricity to a community for the first time. For their next challenge the Stevens chapter is working on an application for a future community center/clinic in a community that is neighboring Jarabacoa.

Download the ASCE newletter (PDF) to read the full article.