Light up the World: tens of thousands benefit from pioneering solar project

“I was rapidly confronted by the magnitude of the challenge that we faced,” Dave says. “Almost a third of humanity – 1.6 billion people – has no access to safe, healthy and affordable lighting, so it was essential to find a way to spread solid state lighting on a much larger scale.”

To do so he had to overcome the main obstacle to mass distribution: production and import costs. A lighting system typically consists of a 5-watt solar panel, a 12 volt-7 amp hour maintenance-free lead acid battery and two WLED lamps. It costs almost US$100 if manufactured in a developed country – far too much for people earnbing only $1-2 a day. The Rolex Laureate found that he could lower the price by decentralising production of the lamps. The diodes are made in the US and Japan, but the lighting sets are assembled far more cheaply in developing countries, reducing costs to users.

In Kathmandu, Dave and his wife, Jenny, set up a company called Pico Power Nepal (PPN) to produce lighting systems locally. The company was handed over to a local entrepreneur in 2000, and has made almost 6,000 sets. Profits have been reinvested in making new products appropriate to the needs of Nepalese people, different sizes of lamps, a system for recharging batteries using solar power, and solar systems that track the sun.

LUTW also went to Sri Lanka to develop lamps locally. After the Boxing Day tsunami hit the island in December 2004 LUTW distributed 1,000 lighting systems in the south and east of the country to light up the shelters occupied by refugees who had been forced to abandon their homes – a world-first application of the technology. To meet the needs of the local people, a small company in the capital, Colombo, Crystal Electronics, took on the task of manufacturing the lamps using designs supplied by Irvine-Halliday. By the end of 2005 more than 2,000 SSL systems had been distributed to 10,000 refugees, and production continues to this day. “Providing a reliable source of lighting for communities who find themselves in such a terrible situation does a lot to improve their physical, psychological and spiritual condition,” says Irvine-Halliday.

Africa is a priority for lighting. The Foundation is active in Ghana and Central Africa – delivering light to 30,000 people – but Dave says there is still vast need for affordable lighting systems across the continent. South Africa has become Dave’s launch-pad to meet this need. “I truly believe that South Africa is the key: when it embraces solid-state lighting in a big way, the rest of the continent will follow.”

Since 2005, he has worked with a number of South-African companies to introduce SSL, and the first lighting sets will be produced by the end of 2007. “In the shops you read on certain products: ‘Proudly made in South Africa’,” Dave says. ”I’d love to put that on our lighting systems.”

South Africa is also pioneering the distribution of SSL systems, via microcredit. By allowing people to take out loans for amounts that are to date too small to interest traditional banks, microcredit makes it possible for them to undertake small-scale economic initiatives – such as buying a lighting system. Poor people spend an average of $US77 a year on kerosene lighting, Dave says: “If the poor can use their kerosene funds to buy SSL systems, they can pay off all their lighting in around one year. Once paid, the lighting is virtually free in the following years, apart from the cost of replacing batteries, which amounts to about $10 every few years. The lamps and solar panels last for decades.

Introducing simple lighting sets could thus save billions of dollars for hundreds of millions of poor families, freeing up what they normally spend on lighting for food, education and other essentials. At the same time they would be helping to reduce global CO2 emissions and climate change.”

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