RESOLUTION PROJECT

Geyserflicker

Geyserflicker

Geyserflicker

Fellow(s)

Country

BIO

Resolution Fellows Harald Oswin and Barry McKenna are co-founders of ‘Geyserflicker.’ In South Africa, boilers (or “geysers”) account for nearly 40% of a household’s energy expenditure.  The nation is facing a power crisis; families are doing all they can to reduce their electricity costs and reducing load on the grid at peak hours is essential to maintaining national power stability.  The Geyser Flicker team has designed a simple mechanism to automate the activation of the boiler at key times, thereby promoting energy efficiency, sustainability, and cost savings for families.  The team hopes to deploy this low-cost solution through local retailers (the equivalent of CVS or Walmart) and scale this into a revenue generating social enterprise.  Harald is an Applied Mathematics concentrator at Harvard University who hails from the Kingdom of Swaziland in Southern Africa. His interests are entrepreneurship, statistics, design, technology, finance, and politics.  He believes entrepreneurship will be the key turbine for development in developing countries.  Barry is a mechanical engineering student at Harvard University and is primarily interested in energy-conservation technology, particularly high-efficiency automobiles.  After graduation, he hopes to begin working in industry but with the long-term goal of starting smaller entrepreneurial ventures in the energy sector.