Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Solar Lighting for Remote Rural Communities
EPA Grant Number: SU833538Title: Solar Lighting for Remote Rural Communities
Investigators: Cumberbatch, Toby , Ho, Allan , Panda, Anurag , Grun, Ari , Batiir, Blandina , Anipa, David , Berger, David , Jacobs, Ian , Stevenson, James , Gazes, Michael , Wong, Nicholas , Hogan, Ryan , Foley, Sara , Galaa, Sylvester , Hsieh, Yann
Institution: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art , University of Developmental Studies (UDS) , Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)
Current Institution: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art , Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) , University of Developmental Studies (UDS)
EPA Project Officer: Page, Angela
Phase: I
Project Period: August 31, 2007 through July 31, 2008
Project Amount: $10,000
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet (2007) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Pollution Prevention/Sustainable Development , P3 Challenge Area - Air Quality , P3 Awards , Sustainable and Healthy Communities
Objective:
The objective of this research is to develop a replacement light source for kerosene lanterns for use in remote off-grid communities in the Developing World that uses a renewable source of energy, provides superior light, and can be inexpensively produced in the country of use, using indigenous materials where possible. Kerosene lanterns are relatively expensive to run due to the cost and limited availability of kerosene and replacement wicks and globes. Without spotlessly clean globes, they provide poor quality illumination; they consume fossil fuel, and generate carbon dioxide and other gaseous by-products, thereby creating health hazards and generally unpleasant interior environments.
Electrically rechargeable lanterns offer significant benefits ranging from cost savings to a more convenient light source, to providing an environment conducive to learning for school children. These lanterns require minimal maintenance, provide a more comfortable illumination field and spectral output, and eliminate the polluting effects of burning kerosene. We have designed, fabricated and deployed an inexpensive solar lighting system comprising a charging station and rechargeable lanterns that goes some ways towards meeting the goals of this project.
Research into lighting systems for poor rural communities commenced in fall 2006 under the auspices of the Center for Sustainable Engineering, Architecture and Art – Materials, Manufacturing and Minimalism at The Cooper Union. The investigation was initiated to help make incoming freshmen engineering students aware of the concepts of sustainability, minimalist engineering and the profound need to adopt a holistic approach to engineering design. Setting the location for the lighting system in Ghana, to coincide with an award from the National Science Foundation, extended the student learning to thinking about approaches to finding engineering solutions for those at the base of the pyramid. The outcomes of this early work were rudimentary designs for a rechargeable lantern and charging station – and an appreciation that student interest in working on projects that are of direct benefit to the poor is high. A rudimentary lighting system was installed in Northern Ghana in June 2007.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
The 132 students enrolled in the fall 2007 freshman course, “Engineering Design and Problem Solving”, were presented with a choice of five projects; one was a challenge to “Design, build and evaluate – a portable, rechargeable lantern that can be used – as a flashlight, for general lighting, for reading and studying, that will run for at least two days without a recharge; and that costs less than $10.” Demand for participation in this project was high; over one third of the freshmen made it their first choice.
During the semester, the 30 students chosen for the project were exposed to the key concepts set forth above through discussions, lectures, and their own research. Through presentations and peer-to-peer discussions, students in the other sections of the class were also exposed to these concepts. At the beginning of 2008, a multidisciplinary group of students emerged from the freshman class who continued to work on the project with key advisors and more senior students – the whole functioning as an interdisciplinary team. The result is a prototype solar lighting system, parts of which have already been delivered to Nambeg, a remote, rural community of about 500 people, close to Jirapa in the Upper West Region of Ghana. The remaining components and systems will be installed this coming summer in a further three communities of similar size in the same area. We list below our key findings and outcomes:- We have designed and constructed a lantern that is amenable to fabrication in rural regions; it does not require specialized tools or highly skilled labor. It is robust, easy to maintain, repair and, if necessary, upgrade as more efficient components become available.
- We have designed electrical circuitry to drive the light emitting diode (LED) with pulsed current, thereby enabling the lantern to provide full power illumination for approximately 24 hours from a 4.5 Ah lead acid battery, discharged to a depth of approximately 50%.
- With input from Homer, a free application available from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, we have designed a much-improved, multiunit charging station comprising an 80W solar panel and a locally available 75 Ah car battery. The station will support simultaneous charging of up to ten lanterns, accommodating up to six consecutive cloudy days possible in this part of the world.
- The PI visited Ghana in January 2008, returning to the village in which the first prototype lighting system had been installed in 2007. He found that the lanterns were all working, had freshly charged batteries and were being used extensively. The solar panels were relatively clean and the base station car battery was in excellent condition – indicative of regular charging. More surprising was the news that the lanterns had caused a certain amount of conflict between members of the community. It transpired that the Chief’s family had taken advantage of its social standing and retained the lanterns instead of sharing them with the other members of the community; with an external mediator, the situation was resolved. As sad as this is to relate, it provides ample evidence for the demand for a rechargeable lantern.
- The PI delivered eight of the newly designed and fabricated lanterns, and a new base station charging system. Members of the community were instructed in the operation of the new charging system and lanterns. Mr. Peter Kuusori, a retired District Cultural Officer well known to the members of the Nambeg community, is providing a link between the community and The Cooper Union with regard to the day-to-day operation of the lighting system. With each of the eight lanterns, a notebook and pen were issued and the users asked to record their usage and assessment of the lantern. The overall intention is that each family within the community will have the opportunity to use the lanterns on a rolling basis.
- We have made good progress towards the design of a modular luminaire capable of being assembled close to the point of use with unskilled labor. We have discovered that it is difficult to transform the light output of a white LED into a comfortable, diffuse light source without considerable loss of optical power. We have explored a number of avenues and current efforts are focused on a transparent cylinder containing a random array and distribution of reflecting surfaces with very small area. Possibilities include a gel containing air bubbles or a dispersion of mesoparticles in colloidal or gel form.
- By the end of this project period, we intend to have four complete prototype systems installed in four different communities within the environs of Jirapa: each system will comprise a base charging station and at least 10 lanterns. Other lanterns will be delivered to our colleagues in the Engineering Department and selected students in the Art Department at KNUST.
- A design for a different culture and people is of little use without input and feedback from the stakeholders. Working with faculty and students from KNUST and the Nambeg community in North Western Ghana, we have been able to learn something of the ways in which people in very poor, remote rural communities actually use these light sources. They are teaching us about the technology gap that exists between them and us. We are learning about their preferred requirements for a light source and their preferred procedure for recharging the battery, and we have been able to observe first hand their usage of the lantern.
Conclusions:
Engineering for the poor often comprises the adaptation of established solutions from the developed world to satisfy a perceived demand in the developing world; this approach takes into account neither the real needs of the intended user nor the operating environment in which the solution is implemented. Such errors are further compounded by the distribution of these solutions in the form of “aid” in which the issues of sustainability are rarely addressed – and that are usually devoid of the principles of socially, economically and environmentally responsible entrepreneurship. The net result, so perfectly described by Ian Smillie in “Mastering the Machine Revisited: Poverty, Aid and Technology,” is that “… too many failures in the ‘development business’ have been ignored or covered up, condemning poor people to suffer the re-invention of too many wheels that never worked in the first place.” William Easterly, in “The White Man’s Burden,” forcefully argues that the developed world can help Africa emerge from poverty by providing the poor with the means to establish their own self-reliance and, through this, gain their own self-determination.
As outlined in the previous section, the students were required to create an all-embracing design to satisfy stringent sustainability, business and engineering criteria. When forced to implement these requirements simultaneously, the students gained an appreciation of the conflicting demands present in cross-sector programs, and the essential interplay and interdependencies of the multidisciplinary inputs into the design, launch, marketing, and sustainable demand that are required for the successful introduction of a new product. They are beginning to understand the role of unadorned entrepreneurship in new business ventures. Working in emerging markets, the students see the critical function of micro-financing, the benefits gained by sharing the cost of expensive resources, the crucial importance of including the end-user in the design process, and the need to understand and characterize the environment in which the product will be used.
The students also had to consider the potential ancillary consequences of their work. The lantern itself cannot alleviate poverty, or provide food or water. It can enable education and, to a certain extent, provide more productive time by “lengthening” the day, and, its local fabrication and distribution can provide some economic advantages, thereby leading to greater self-determination. The students learnt that any project of this type must proceed with caution; transparency and community partnership are critical to its success. They also learnt that, underlying any presumed benefits, are profound questions about lifestyle, community, family, culture and traditions.
By incorporating the elements of entrepreneurship and business into the design process, these students gained insight into the constructs of real world sustainable engineering and the outcome of minimalist design. To establish a self-sustaining market, the design has to be such that the members of these impoverished communities will actually want to buy the lantern, priced to cover the real cost. Thus the lantern has to be sufficiently attractive, as a quality-of-lifeenhancing product, for people to choose to forego their income for many weeks in order to acquire one of these light sources.
Cooper Union students in the disciplines of chemical, civil, electrical and mechanical engineering who worked on this project in the US received training and insight into the rigorous demands of engineering for developing nations. As did those who went to Ghana last summer, the next cohort of students who go to Ghana this coming summer will learn what it means to live in another culture as an outsider and how people from different cultures frame questions differently. They will work in a different “engineering” milieu, where education, practices, and methods are often constrained by a dramatic lack of resources. Working with their Ghanaian colleagues, the students learn to design using a minimalist approach that incorporates input from the stakeholders, and utilizes indigenous resources and techniques. They will learn to derive solutions to basic problems that have the potential to improve the day-to-day life of thousands of people in rural communities throughout the developing world – and which may provide insight into ways in which the developed world can better utilize its resources.
Proposed Phase II Objectives and Strategies:
The ideal outcome of Phase II is a pilot production/assembly facility located in Northern Ghana to provide lanterns to those for whom the lantern is intended at a cost they can afford. Establishing a small solar lighting business in North Western Ghana, without major reliance on external funding or collateral is considered to be one of the most important and challenging aspects of this project. Currently, nongovernmental organizations and other organizations headquartered in the South, control a majority of the local development. Through this project, we hope to break this mold. We believe that with our intimate knowledge and long association with the region, we have a chance.
To ensure that the lighting system meets the needs of the intended users, a crucial component of Phase II is continued collaboration with communities in Northern Ghana. To expand our user base, we intend to install future prototype systems in communities within the Bongo District (with whom we currently enjoy a fruitful collaboration) in the Upper East Region, and in the Sissala District (between Jirapa and Bongo) with whom we have contacts. Essential input, critical to the success of the entire project will come from all of the feedback provided by users of the prototype lighting systems. Clearly the technological performance is very important as in “How well did the lanterns and charging system work?” Equally important inputs to a sustainable engineering design are the societal feedback – “How was the lantern used and what was it used for?” and location feedback – “What aspects of the lantern’s usage were determined by its physical location and by the culture of those using the lanterns?”
The lantern, designed to be efficient, robust, easy to maintain, repair and upgrade, also needs to be adaptable for assembly and use throughout the developing world, and disposal at its end-of-life. The circuit design will be optimized for efficient current drive to the LED and also to withstand the incorporation of components with wider tolerance than those generally available in the developed world. Ideally, the design will accommodate future improvements in technology, enabling the lanterns to be easily upgraded at minimal cost.
From a technical perspective, the design of an efficient light distribution system currently presents the biggest challenge. However efficiently the electrical current can be converted into light, that light is only useful if it illuminates the region of interest. We currently believe that light from the LED can be more efficiently distributed by a combination of reflective and transmissive optics. Initial designs used a translucent plastic cylindrical shell to scatter the light. While it produced a very pleasant diffuse light source, it had a large insertion loss that reduced the overall efficiency of the lantern considerably. As discussed, we are already investigating a number of different approaches but are of the opinion that many options remain to be explored. We have in mind the combination of a dimpled surface reminiscent of the surface of a moth’s eye that can reflect or transmit the incident light over a large angular range so as to produce a diffuse source: coupling this source to a dispersion of small reflective particles distributed in a transparent medium has the potential to produce the desired illumination patterns.
Ideally the light distribution system will couple directly to the light source and drive electronics to yield a modular luminaire suitable for incorporation into a housing whose design is easily able to incorporate indigenous materials and accommodate local culture. A modular luminaire will enable the development of a local lantern assembly, distribution and maintenance structure that can be thoroughly tested and optimized during this project period. Where possible, local sources for the supply and fabrication of components such as circuit boards and optics will be sought and evaluated.
A significant component of the work in Phase II is research to establish a realistic lantern price and the means to get the lanterns into the communities. The price must cover the cost of components and provide a sufficient profit margin to encourage entrepreneurship. We believe that three types of financing may be required: micro-loans for the purchase of a lantern; small commercial loans to establish lantern assembly plants; small commercial loans to establish installation and training ventures; and, finally, external assistance with the purchase of shared resources such as the charging station. During the summer of 2007, we made preliminary enquiries into possible sources of finance. We discovered that the Agricultural Banks charge roughly 25% interest on all loans, often requiring some type of collateral. Traditional money collectors, or susus, are able to make micro-loans with similar interest rates without collateral. For the base station, assistance from Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid will be investigated for purchase of the solar panels.
The final component of Phase II is the development of a blueprint for a network of small business ventures to install and provide instruction for the use and maintenance of these lighting systems; and other, more localized, individuals able to provide the minimal routine maintenance necessary for the charging stations and lanterns. Adoption of these systems has the potential to reduce rural depopulation by providing light for education and small business ventures in addition to the opportunities for entrepreneurship in providing the lighting system itself.
Supplemental Keywords:
RFA, scientific discipline, sustainable industry/business, environmental engineering, sustainable environment, lighting, technology, alternative energy source, carbon dioxide, clean energy, clean technologies, environmentally conscious design, green design, kerosene alternative, pollution prevention, community based, base of the pyramid,, RFA, Scientific Discipline, Sustainable Industry/Business, POLLUTION PREVENTION, Sustainable Environment, Energy, Technology for Sustainable Environment, Environmental Engineering, energy conservation, sustainable development, drinking water, ecological design, environmental sustainability, heat exchanger, energy efficiency, solar energy, water treatmentRelevant Websites:
http://www.ee.cooper.edu/sea2m3/africa/lantern Exit
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.