Deployment Guide/Workbook

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This is a workbook for estimating the cost of a large-scale deployment of One Laptop Per Child. It is a working document that reflects lessons learned from our initial pilots and deployments. Additional ideas will be incorporated as we learn from each other.

It is available in Microsoft Excel format: Deployment_Workbook.xls

Introduction

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Deployment Workbook contains six worksheets. There are two worksheets for use in planning: Country and School. The Country worksheet takes information about overall number of laptops and rough percentages of schools and provides a rough estimate of the costs. The School worksheet takes detailed information about a particular school and provides an estimate of the required infrastructure, power, and costs given different power scenarios.

These estimated costs depend on the accuracy of the system component costs specified in the Laptop Costs, Program Costs, and Other Costs worksheets. While the defaults provided are based on commercially available components, these must be updated to reflect current and local prices for these components before using this workbook to estimate costs.

How to use the workbook

• Determine local prices for items such as school servers, generators, wireless access points, wireless switches, the cost of running a Cat5 network cable or power cable for 30m in a typical school, and update the Other Costs worksheet.

• If estimating costs across the entire deployment, the Program Costs worksheet should also be updated.

• At this point, you can estimate costs across the entire deployment using the Country Expenses Estimate worksheet.

• If you want to see the estimated cost of a single school, and compare the costs of different methods of powering the laptops, use the Individual School Expenses Estimate worksheet.

Workbook Description

Individual School Expenses Estimate

This worksheet calculates the estimated expenses for a particular school, illustrating the costs of different power generation and distribution schemes. It has two sections. The first contains six fields that describe the school, the remainder of the worksheet shows estimated power usage and costs.

To be filled by the Country

Number of laptops in the school - The total number of XO laptops deployed at a school, including teachers and students.

Internet Connectivity - How the school will be connected to the Internet. Allowed options are:

• DSL - A DSL broadband connection
• VSAT - A satellite connection
• GSM - A cellular telephone data connection, GPRS, EDGE, or other (3G)
• Other - An alternative local method may be specified
• None - no Internet connection will be provided

The local costs of each of these options, in terms of money and power, must be specified in the Other Costs worksheet.

Laptop Usage - The number of times a laptop will be charged in a day. To specify a usage model where laptops are continuously connected (both charging and operating) throughout the day, specify 2. Fractional values --- such as 0.5, indicating one charge every two days --- may be specified. This workbook assumes that if multiple charges per day are supplied to the laptops, they are supplied sequentially, not simultaneously (for example, using a multi-battery charger in addition to the laptop).

Infrastructure Usage - The number of hours in a school day that networking infrastructure and the school server are operated.

How much storage - The number of days of electrical power storage that is provided in solar powered schools. Fractional portions of a day (0.5, 0.2) may be specified.

Hours of sunlight per day - The number of hours per day that the school receives sunlight acceptable for generating solar power.

Suggested Infrastructure

Number of Servers

Number of Access Points

Number of Switches

Power Requirements

Peak Power Draw at this school - Specified in kiloWatts. This is estimated as the power required to continuously power the server and networking infrastructure, plus that required to power the "Simultaneous Charging" portion of the laptops in a school. If multiple charges per day are supplied to the laptops, it is assumed that they are not supplied simultaneously.

Power per day required by this school - Specified in kiloWatt Hours. This is the total amount of energy required to operate the schools laptops and associated infrastructure for a single day.

Estimated Costs

With Grid & MBC

The number of Multi Battery Chargers could be based on how many charges you required each day, how long people are in school to swap batteries and how many hours it takes the MBC to charge a battery. It is instead currently based on the Simultaneous_Charging ratio specified as a constant in the Other Costs worksheet.

Other Costs

This worksheet specifies the equipment costs and power requirements used for estimates across the workbook. It contains all costs, other than those associated directly with the XO laptop (specified in Laptop Costs), or with the pedagogical aspects of a deployment (specified in Program Costs). While example prices are provided, actual prices quoted on the local market must be substituted before using this workbook for budget estimates. All prices should include shipping costs and duties.

Power Infrastructure

XOP Distributed or Rack - This is the Belkin XOP Distributed power system for the laptops. It is a power supply which supports four laptops per node, and may be chained to simply accomodate more laptops. It includes a rack for creating a charging station for the laptops. This is an estimated price of $150 ex-works, and $15 shipping

Multi Battery Charger - This is the OLPC multi battery charging system for the laptops. It is a battery charger which charges up to fifteen laptop batteries at a time, and takes either an AC input or a DC input direct from an array of solar panels. This is an estimated price of $300 ex-works, with $50 shipping.

System Constants

Number of Laptops Charging - This is the number of laptops simultaneously charging in a school at one time. This ratio should be 100% if all of the students are capable of plugging their laptops in simultaneously. This is used to estimate the peak power draw, necessary when estimating the required generators, inverters, and school power infrastructure.