Saturday, November 22, 2008

Solar Lantern for the Poor

TERI Solar Lantern to light-up the darkness of the Poor

Every time attending the symposium that participate by Prof Pachauri in Japan, he must introduce his institute project, TERI Solar Lantern. It is very touching to know that the leading energy research institute in India never forget about the poor community in their country. The Solar Lantern is not only to bring clean energy lighting to the poor community, it will bring changes to the whole community as well.

A lot of developing country is still facing shortage of electricity. Many of the rural village is not equip with electricity supply. Even in the city, electric breakdown is a common daily even. It is very difficult for the people stay in advance developed country to understand the difficulties outside of their comfortable life style.

For the village without electric supply, the village will use woods, carosin etc to cook and light up. As the oil price increase so much recently, most of the poor people unable to afford to have light at night.

TERI has design a solar lantern system to help the poor community in India. The Lantern will be charge using the solar panel, and rent to the poor villager for about 2 rupee per day. As the electric source is from the sun, it do not emit green house gases, and these poor community is using green energy. The light is important to make the family feel more secure, reduce air domestic pollution problem, and enable to children to study at night.

It is not only bring light to the rural community, but also hope, health and better future. It also help to increase the capacity of the community, or called as social capital by the social scientist.

TERI is still seeking donor to further expend the project to more village around the world. The cost of the lantern is about USD 100. The battery is include inside the lantern, and it use energy efficien LED light. For more detail, please visit to TERI, Lighting a billion life website
http://www.terina.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22








The charging of the lantern is using the normal big solar panel install on the roof. One solar system will be able to charge 50 lantern at once. The system will be operate and manage by local community.
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