A decade ago, Katherine Lucey oversaw a heavily
subsidized $1,500 solar-light installation in the rural district of
Mpigi in central Uganda. The 60-watt rooftop solar panel system could
power three lights in the four-room, off-the-grid house.
The
family's father wanted the lights in his office, bedroom, and main
room. But his wife successfully argued instead for a light in the room
where she cooked dinner, a light outside for security, and a light for
her chicken coop. After all, chickens lay more eggs when they have more
light.
Lucey recalls being struck by how something as simple as
light could profoundly change a family's life. Indeed, after
solar-powered lighting was installed, the family prospered by selling
more eggs and, over time, they bought a cow, a goat, and a pig. The
woman even started a school and women's literacy club.
"It was such a simple, fundamental intervention," said Lucey, who now runs a solar lamp nonprofit called Solar Sister.
Today,
solar lights are making similar differences in millions of lives in the
developing world-at a fraction of what they cost when Lucey did the
installation at Mpigi.
(Related: "
Sunlight In the Dark")
Thanks
to technological advances, simple solar lamps go for as little as $10
to $20 each, and ones that have multiple brightness settings and an
outlet to charge a cell phone don't cost much more. For daytime use,
there are even cheaper options, such as a $2 to $3 solar bottle bulb
made of a plastic bottle of purified water and bleach, sealed into the
roof. The water helps disperse sunlight into a room, while the chlorine
keeps mold from growing.
In wealthy countries, where access to
cheap fossil-fueled electricity from the grid is nearly universal, solar
electricity is still seen as an expensive energy option. That's
particularly true when considering that a rooftop photovoltaic
installation of sufficient size to power an electronics- and
appliance-packed home costs tens of thousands of dollars. But the
calculus is much different when bringing electricity for the first time
to homes and communities that have none, with an aim of providing basic
needs such as lighting and cell-phone charging. Development
organizations are finding that solar energy is one of the most
cost-effective options for providing not only power, but also a better
livelihood.
Beyond Candles and Kerosene
Private
companies and nonprofits are tapping into an enormous global need. An
estimated 1.6 billion people, or more than one-fifth of the world's
population, don't have access to a public electricity grid and instead
rely on other means of lighting such as kerosene and candles. Nearly 600
million of the energy-poor live in
Africa.
(Related: "
The Solvable Problem of Energy Poverty")
Buying
kerosene fuel can strain already tight household budgets, often meaning
little or no light for key evening and nighttime stretches when
children could be studying and parents could be working indoors.
Kerosene
also produces toxic smoke and soot, which damages lungs and causes
other serious health problems. Kerosene lamps, especially makeshift
ones, also are dangerous-tens of thousands of children and adults in the
developing world die or are seriously burned in kerosene accidents each
year.
It's unclear how fast the solar lamp market is growing, but
India's 2011 census alone estimated 1.1 million homes with solar
lighting devices.
Examples run the gamut:
- The Scandinavian furnishings company Ikea has partnered with UNICEF and Save the Children to provide solar-powered lamps to tens of thousands of children in rural schools in India and Pakistan.
- The International Organization for Migration provided thousands of solar lamp systems to people displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
- Nonprofit EMACE Sri Lanka has distributed 172 solar lamps to fishermen in Sri Lanka for night fishing.
- A Philippines organization called Isang Litrong Liwanag (A Liter of Light)
has helped install more than 30,000 solar bottle bulbs in mostly poor
areas of the Philippines. On a sunny day, a one-liter bottle sealed into
the roof of a shack refracts light at a strength roughly equivalent to
that of a 55-watt light bulb. The bottle bulb was designed by students
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but the concept of a solar
glass bottle reportedly was pioneered in Brazil by Alfredo Moser, a São
Paulo mechanic who was seeking to light up his workshop.
(Related: "
Solar Brings Light to Quake-Darkened Haiti" and "
Linkin Park's Bid to 'Power the World'")
"A
solar bulb works at daytime only given that the sun is the source of
light but is also useful at night if the moon is bright or if there is a
source of light (nearby) for example a street lamp post," said Katrina
Cardenas, A Liter of Light's internal affairs director.
U.S.-based
d.light Design
was one of the pioneers in distributing rugged solar lamps and
lanterns, and now distributes its products in 40 countries, focusing
particularly on Sub-Saharan Africa and India.
In just five years,
the company has distributed more than 1.4 million lanterns, ranging in
price from about $10 for a student lamp to about $45 for a rugged,
handheld lantern with four light settings and cell-phone charger. A
partnership with the Shell* Foundation is aimed at implementing market
awareness programs and supporting local entrepreneurship.
Donn
Tice, chief executive officer, said that while d.light is a for-profit
company, it has a social mission to help people replace kerosene
lanterns, cheap flashlights and other throwaway items with safer,
cleaner, more permanent lanterns.
"These products really have to
be rugged to survive and do their job in a developing-world
environment," Tice said in a call from the company's Delhi office.
Atul
Mittal, d.light's India marketing director, said a family can recover
their cost within three to four months, based on buying a kerosene
lantern for $2.50 and spending $3 a month on fuel.
Surveys conducted in India showed students increased their study time and received higher grades.
Toyola Energy in Ghana is known for selling energy-efficient cookstoves but is using the same network to
sell solar lamps.
In 2011, the company sold 5,453 solar lanterns and small home solar
systems, mainly in northern Ghana but also some in nearby Togo and
Nigeria, said co-founder Suraj Wahab. He expects those numbers to double
this year.
(Related: "
Protecting Health and the Planet With Clean Cookstoves")
A lantern with three light settings, a small plug-in solar panel, and a cell-phone charger goes for $30.
Wahab
said Toyola Energy has found that the "very basic" lantern can change
the lives of rural dwellers. "They have aspirations to live the good
life like everybody else and are willing to pay for it," he said by
email.
In fact, he said, some customers have paid for their
systems by setting up businesses to recharge villagers' cell-phone
batteries. In rural villages without public electricity, people have to
scramble to find places and ways to recharge their cell phones.
From Light to Economic Development
The
family in Mpigi, Uganda, who used solar lights to power their
egg-selling business inspired Katherine Lucey to form a U.S.-based
nonprofit two years ago called Solar Sister, which trains women as
entrepreneurs who sell solar light products in Africa. ExxonMobil
Foundation's Women's Economic Opportunity Initiative provided a key
grant to launch a full-scale enterprise.
(Related: "
Nigeria's Solar Projects Yield Both Failure and Success")
Solar
Sister is targeting women, because they typically are the ones who
manage household utilities. The nonprofit now has 143 entrepreneurs who
have sold more than 3,500 solar lighting products in Uganda, Rwanda, and
South Sudan, benefiting an estimated 17,600 lives. According to the
industry rule of thumb, one solar lamp system will benefit an average of
five people in a household.
Lucey is candid about the challenges,
which include a heavy investment in training in part to bridge the
technology know-how gap.
About 50 percent of the women interested
in becoming entrepreneurs get through the first phase of the training,
and only about 40 percent of those wind up doing well, she said. The
others participate at a lesser level, perhaps selling a few lamps a
month to supplement other incomes.
Solar Sister provides
entrepreneurs with a "Business in a Bag," which includes a vetted supply
of inventory, marketing materials, a ledger sheet, a bag and a T-shirt.
The
organization also provides a variation of micro-credit. Products are
provided up-front and entrepreneurs repay in 30 days, after they get
cash from sales. "This allows them to start up a business without access
to capital," Lucey said. "If they are unable to sell the product, they
can return it for full credit."
A successful entrepreneur
typically would sell 10 products per month at an average retail price of
$45 (student lamps, lamp/phone chargers, a home system or two) and earn
a 10 percent commission, or $45. That's $540 in annual income, at least
in line with per capita income figures in
Uganda.
Women
participate at the level that suits their needs, Lucey said. "We have
many who sell less, and are happy just to make $10 a month to make ends
meet or pay school fees for the fifth child in the family, and a few who
sell much, much more."
(Related: "
Fighting Poverty Can Save Energy, Nicaragua Project Shows")
She
gave the example of a woman named Grace whose husband earns $250 a year
as a counselor for families of AIDS patients. Grace has been able to
triple her family's income by becoming a Solar Sister entrepreneur. The
family needs the money: Grace and her husband support 10 children,
including six from relatives who died of AIDS. The additional income has
enabled all of the children to attend school.
Lucey said market
saturation isn't a problem at this point. For example, Solar Sister has a
team of 15 entrepreneurs in Mityana, Uganda, which "looks like a
typical rural community with dirt roads, mud-walled, thatched-roofed
houses, and chickens wandering about." But that rural town has a
population of 350,000 people, and is growing rapidly.
While the
worst-case scenario for this type of enterprise is that an entrepreneur
disappears with a small amount of inventory, the worst case Solar Sister
has encountered came when a woman wanted to supplement her income from
selling fish at a roadside market.
"It did not work out too well
for her, the product was not a natural fit for her customers to say the
least, and the lamps came back to us a little smelly," Lucey said. She
said that prompted Solar Sister to institute a "must be returned in good
condition" policy.
(Related Quiz: "
What You Don't Know About Solar Power")
*Shell
is sponsor of National Geographic's Great Energy Challenge initiative.
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