Thomas Friedman, on page 154 of his book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" says that Africa cannot climb out of poverty without electric power available to poor villages.
The ideas used in my firefighting invention can be used to bring electric power, water, and communications to poor and remote villages.
Many regions of the planet are currently experiencing severe droughts. Many cities in the world may experience severe reductions in the availability of fresh water.
The ideas described below can be used to quickly deploy emergency water pipelines to supply water to such cities.
In the figure on the left, I show a pipeline made from plastic or metallic pipe which has electric pumps that are powered by wires that are placed inside of the pipes.
A long distance pipeline will require much higher voltages than required for the firefighting examples, but waterproof cables are readily available to do the job.
Step-down transformers can be added to each pump to reduce the high voltages to lower voltages that the pumps can handle.
The advantages of placing the power wires inside the pipeline are numerous. No power wires need to be buried in the ground or strung from poles.
The power wires are protected from hazards by being placed inside the pipe. The pipeline can be placed above ground which makes its installation rapid and low cost.
Fiber optic or wire communication cables are used to monitor and control the operation of the pumps in the system via an ethernet type network. The network can support TV cameras, microphones, and other devices to provide security to the pipeline. Voice communication along the pipeline can be provided by the network.
A hose based version of my invention can be used to distribute the water, power and communications from the pipeline to nearby localities.
