One of my favorite things about camping is that I get a chance to break out my Petzl MYO 5 Xenon Head Lamp. It has five tiny Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) as well as a larger flood light (in case a companion falls down a bottomless pit). When I first attach the unit to my head some people smirk and comment that I look a little silly. Inevitably, they are all begging me for use of its luminosity by the end of the night. But here is the best part: I bought my headlamp three years ago and have used it on countless camping trips and all night hikes, and it’s STILL running on the original set of 4 batteries. The Christian Science Monitor reports on the great benefits that the tiny LED could bring to rural India:
As many as 1.5 billion people – nearly 80 million in India alone – light their houses using kerosene as the primary lighting media. The fuel is dangerous, dirty, and – despite being subsidized – consumes nearly 4 percent of a typical rural Indian household’s budget. A recent report by the Intermediate Technology Development Group suggests that indoor air pollution from such lighting media results in 1.6 million deaths worldwide every year.LED lamps, or more specifically white LEDS, are believed to produce nearly 200 times more useful light than a kerosene lamp and almost 50 times the amount of useful light of a conventional bulb.
“This technology can light an entire rural village with less energy than that used by a single conventional 100 watt light bulb,” says Dave Irvine-Halliday, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada and the founder of Light Up the World Foundation (LUTW). Founded in 1997, LUTW has used LED technology to bring light to nearly 10,000 homes in remote and disadvantaged corners of some 27 countries like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, and the Philippines.
As the article mentions, at least one village has already been transformed by Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), a Bombay-based nongovernmental organization that has created a solar powered LED unit that costs only $55. Once installed the energy is obviously free of charge. The key to this is to convince the Indian government that this is much more cost effective than spending money to light India in the conventional way. To do this you would have to lower the $55 per unit cost. This can be done if the solar cells were locally manufactured. This in turn could provide employment benefits in the communities doing the manufacturing.
[The founder of the NGO] wants to set up an LED manufacturing unit and a solar panel manufacturing unit in India. If manufactured locally, the cost of his LED lamp could plummet to $22, as they won’t incur heavy import duties. “But we need close to $5 million for this,” he says. “And investments are difficult to come by.”<
p>Mr. Chaddha says he has also asked the government to exempt the lamps from such duties, but to no avail.
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p>A measly five million in exchange for such widespread change? This sounds like exactly the type of thing Bill and Melinda Gates would want to fund. It is a shame though that the Indian government doesn’t just wave the duties on something that would vastly improve its infrastructure.
The lamps provided by GSBF have enough power to provide just four hours of light a day. But that’s enough for people to get their work done in the early hours of the night, and is more reliable than light generated off India’s electrical grid.Before the LED lamps came, spending Rs. 40 (a little less than a dollar) each month on kerosene was too much. Jadhav earns just Rs. 50 a day as a contract laborer, and supports a family of five. “Now the money saved,” he says with a smile, “goes into the children’s education.”
and how many knew, just from so few words, that the author of this post was Abhi?
DD, I even had a vision of him in cargo pants, fleece jacket, boots and rock hammer. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
New Orleans (fondly referred to as America’s very own Third World country) switched all of their traffic lights over to LEDs a few years ago. They are much brighter, take very little maintenance (burn longer), and one LED is so much more efficient to replace than a large dying bulb. I’m a huge proponent of the cute, little light emitters.
Dr. Halliday is great guy! At a university not known for its idealism, he’s managed to inject a healthy dose of social-consciousness and disciplinary cross-fertilization (e.g. Engineering working with Communications and Culture). Most of the grad students in the department are themselves from India and China (I know several) who are thrilled at the possibiliy of using their knowledge to produce real results outside the industry/academic circle.
I wonder how long it will take for BongBreaker to jump in with his own somewhat flamboyant interpretation of the phrase above, before he realises that Abhi may not necessarily have intended any double-meaning overtones…..
Dude, those LEDs saved my life in Peru on more than one occasion. And probably kept me from accidentally groping my tentmate on more than one occasion as well. 😉
Ha, how ironic. When I was in Peru my LEDs HELPED me grope my tent mate (for warmth only). He is still upset about it.
Gropeback Mountain 2: Macchu Pichu
Its a pity that these Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation guys (who must be fairly enterprising) dont appear to have a website (Google returned nothing, neither did khoj, & gsbf.org doesnt exist) Considering that they’ve got themselves some exposure, they’re likely to have some interested donors. Although perhaps not all quite as generous as Bill & Melinda 😉 , even a paypal link could bring them something fairly substantial over time.
Dude, that is priceless.
…let there be light…
LEDs are excellent & amazingly efficient. they are small miracles, indeed. another case-in-point: during hurricane season we’ve got them stashed around the house for emergencies. i never realized just how great they truly were until summer 2004, when we were without electricity for four days in Florida. the sweltering heat & humidity of late summer, downed power lines crushed by fallen old trees everywhere, stagnating water, and pillaging our canned & dry food supplies were quelled to a comforting lull in the dark as we flicked on those brilliant beacons of hope.
Haha, all the usual suspects beat me to making gags about this one! DD straight to the punch, Jai called me flamboyant (I’m ignoring the rest) and DDiA, another classic!
I’m a big fan of LEDs – I’ve fitted lots of UltraBrite sets to cars (not mine, I’m no rudeboy). And on CSI last night they did an extreme closeup graphic of an LED powering up. Nice info here Abhi, let’s hope things improve.
I’m having a hard time making the “measly $5M” add up too. If it’s really only that much, there’s gotta be something else holding it up (it’s clear that at least for now, “import duties” are the biggest obstacle).
Even domestically, $5M is POCKET CHANGE for industrialists (these days, even in India) – esp. for an oppty this big. That’s roughly how much a Shopping Mall in India costs these days and there are literally HUNDREDS of malls being built there (see for ex.. Contrary to what “Mr. Chaddha” has to say, investments are anything BUT hard to come by in India these days.
It’s cool stuff but there are a few more dots in there that CSM isn’t connecting.
The government should step out of the way, the people will find a more efficient solution weather it be LED based or parafin based. The market to serve the poor is quite large, but the entreprenuer who is going to do that in a big way is going to come from that rank as he or she has seen the problem first hand.
Thank you Brimful and Bong-da. Abhi’s probably gonna black-ball me from this blog for ever.
I warned you once before. The only thing that will get you blackballed is if it turns out that you don’t really live in Austin.
Dude, that was one of the funniest comment I’ve ever read. Keep em coming..
Ma Horns won !!! Yayy…..
Proof enuff Abhi? 🙂
How wonderful! I’m a huge fan of useful technology in a package called simplicity and its enormous benefits to the underprivileged. Thanks for writing about this.
I didnt realised till a drop of tear welled on my eyes to see the villager dancing circling a light a gift from Dr Irvine-Halliday, when I saw the report today at CNN. Never for me appreciate that the light that I just take it granted in my home being so moving for people who never have the right to get one. There are many similar situation here in Indonesia, the grass root people just suffer quietly thinking that is their situation as a given. Hope we can cross this divide in a swift manner and urbanization happening now around the world is not the answer to get a light. Best regards from Indonesia, teddy