Home Illuminated With Kerosene Lamps and Candles
Background:
In 2008 an international research and development team lead by the Appropriate Technology Collaborative was awarded a grant by the Lindbergh Foundation in order to work with our partners in Guatemala and Nicaragua to build and evaluate various designs for LED lights that are superior in performance to the kerosene lamps widely in use in those low income countries today. Energy efficient LED lights are both safer and more affordable than kerosene lighting.
We were not only able to accomplish this goal, but by extending the project by two years, we were able to determine the optimum LED design schematics for use in various environments (i.e. no electricity or erratic electricity) and, in what we believe is an original application of recycled materials, we designed highly affordable and energy-efficient lighting systems built mostly out of old cellphones—an abundant resource that remains almost wholly untapped. The LED lights made out of cellphone components can be used by the exploding population of slum dwellers in cities around the world like Kibera, Kenya and Mumbai, India. We worked with local engineers and technicians to build high-performance, low-cost LED systems and installed them for long term testing. For reasons described below, both of these products have the effect of taking a developing world family out of the nineteenth century and bringing them into the twenty-first century where they can enjoy a much higher quality of life and exercise more power over their life conditions. We now have robust prototypes and will publish their designs here on the ATC website. We are also working with NGO partners to organize bulk purchases of key components for solar home lighting systems.
If you are interested in providing low cost, high value lighting systems in low income parts of the world please contact us at: Contact The Appropriate Technology Collaborative.
Problem:
Many people in low income countries–over 1.6 billion people–live without access to electricity. Another billion people live with unreliable access to power. This creates a web of problems that we set out to solve with this project.
Living without reliable electric lighting limits the productivity of nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Basic activities such as cleaning, reading, schoolwork, and household business cannot be done in the dark. In Africa the lack of electric lighting is growing worse with population growing faster than electrification, a condition that leads to a permanent marginalization of both rural and urban poor.[1] The great majority of people with no or erratic electricity illuminate their homes and businesses with fuel-based kerosene lamps,[2] which creates another set of inter-related problems.
Health Impact:
The health implications of fuel-based lighting are two fold: chronic illness due to indoor air pollution and risk of injury due to the flammable nature of the fuels used.
Kerosene lamps emit fine particles of Black Carbon, or soot. These particles are a major source of indoor air pollution because they quickly become lodged in the bronchial system and can result in chronic disease and death. Chronic pulmonary disease is a leading cause of early death in developing countries primarily due to poor indoor air quality.
The World Health Organization has determined that individuals breathing kerosene fumes and soot inhale the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.[3]
In addition to giving off toxic fumes, kerosene lamps are dangerous! A study conducted in Irrua, Nigeria showed that more than 50% of burn victims brought into hospitals were victims of fires caused by overturned or exploding kerosene lamps.[4]
Environmental Impact:
Kerosene lamps produce more greenhouse gasses per unit of illumination than any other common light source.[5] The environmental effect of 1.6 billion people using kerosene and candles fuel based lighting contributes to global carbon emissions at a rate of 100-150 million tons per year. [6] Beyond CO2 emissions, incomplete combustion of kerosene leads to the release of soot or Black Carbon, which also contributes to global warming and poor indoor air quality.
Economic Impact:
Kerosene lighting is not as powerful as electric light but more expensive–more expensive for a unit of light than what we pay in the developed world.
[Our solar LED system is the least-expensive off-grid approach at $0.03 per klxh (unit of light). Kerosene lighting ranges from $1.80 to $3.80 per klxh.]
Financial Impact:
Several studies in developing countries show that access to proper lighting (of high enough illumination to enable reading and doing household and business-related activities) has significant positive impact on productivity broadly and income-generating activity specifically.[7]
The ATC Solution
Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Appropriate Technology Collaborative (ATC) was founded in 2008 to work side-by-side with communities in developing countries to design, develop, demonstrate, and distribute affordable and sustainable technological solutions that empower people and promote dignity.
Carlos Noe Alvarez Demonstrating a New LED Circuit Board
For this project, we carried out a four-part solution to the complicated set of problems we describe above:
1. We quantified the economic, environmental and health benefits of replacing kerosene lamps with LED lighting in order to test our hypothesis that this would be beneficial.
2. We developed an inexpensive LED circuit board that can match LEDs to a variety of alternative power sources so our clients can illuminate their homes off the electric grid. LEDs (light-emitting diodes) present a superior alternative to incandescent lights because they use less energy, last longer, and are smaller and more reliable. But they also are more expensive and require technologically sophisticated electronics. In the course of this project, we developed an efficient circuit board that will work in low-income countries and meet demand for electricity for the average family. This circuit board has enabled us to reduce the size and cost of the energy source that powers the LEDs. Now it is conceivable to illuminate a house and supply other energy needs through the use of solar electric panels, micro-wind turbines and other small-scale power sources. Such alternative power sources (i.e. solar panels, wind turbines, etc.) will become available to residents of low-income countries in the near future at affordable prices–ATC currently has designs under development, and we are also aware of other organizations who are doing so. Because the cost of electricity in developing countries is so high, these alternatives, offered at affordable prices by NGOs and small/medium scale businesses, may be the best path to electrification for rural parts of developing countries.
3. We plan to use the technical expertise we gain from carrying out this project to consult with nonprofits, governments and individuals who want to provide low-cost Twenty-First Century solar lights to people who currently use Nineteenth Century fuel-based lighting.
4. We will share the designs for the LED circuit boards on our website for use by others. (Designs will be posted at: http://apptechdesign.org by early June.)
C. Results
Carlos Noe Alvares With LED Lights
Carlos Installing LED Lights
Development of Appropriate Technology for Two Research and Test Sites
As the name of our nonprofit implies, the Appropriate Technology Collaborative takes great care to ensure that we partner with residents at each site and enter into a dialogue with them to find technological solutions to their particular problems. This project yielded a very interesting outcome because of this modus operandi; the technological solutions our team devised in collaboration with residents of a rural village in Guatemala were very different from the ones we came up with in partnership with residents of a densely populated urban slum in Nicaragua. These separate solutions can be employed in similar environments (i.e. rural vs. urban slum) around the world. We will tell the story of each site separately below.
1. In Guatemala, we worked with residents in rural settings in the mountains near Quetzaltenango. Most of these homes had either no or intermittent power to their homes; we set out to design an off the grid solar energy system that provids robust, inexpensive lighting from LEDs and also powers a radio and charges cell phones. We determined these as basic needs after spending months living with villagers and evaluating their homes—it was a surprise to us to learn that the residents of these villages felt such a strong need for charging their cellphones, and how complicated that process was for them (see details below). We based our household design on a 12-volt direct current system where input voltage can vary between 9 and 35 volts. (As long as the voltage is within this range the output current is exactly what the most common LEDs require.) We spent some time designing an inexpensive LED circuit board that could take a variety of power inputs, but found that technology was changing so fast that we could purchase one commercially at a cost that was less than the cost of producing it ourselves.
By assembling a circuit board and individual LEDs, a task that can be done on-site,, our design reduces the cost of an LED “light bulb” from $25.00 to between three and five dollars (U.S.), making the cost of a solar home lighting system less expensive to use than kerosene lights. We will publish our most recent circuit board schematics plus specifications for a complete solar home lighting system online at www.apptechdesign.org. Included online will be the cost of materials, manufacturers/suppliers and schematics of the LED circuit board.
Notes on Improved Quality of Life
Our circuit board design combined with other hardware we specify constitute a household lighting and power system that functions above expectations. With two and a half years of data from the field we know that our lights have always worked, even on cloudy days, and that our lights are used more than originally anticipated. Average household use is four hours in the evenings and two hours in the mornings. Moreover the families who have our household solar lighting system have increased income and the children are doing better in school.
Households that rely on fuel-based lighting have severe limitations for several hours every day. They just can’t see well enough to do most work indoors. This is especially limiting for children and young students who can’t do homework or read books at night. They fall behind their peers. From interviews with the families who received our household solar lighting systems we find that the women are now doing a few hours of needle point or weaving in the evenings to sell at the market, improving their standard of living. And their children can do their homework at night for the first time. One family said they plan on sending their daughter to technical school because she was doing so well with her studies and they now have the money to send her.
2. In Nicaragua, we worked with residents of Ciudad Sandino, an area densely populated by “squatters” just outside Managua, and interviewed families who live in “La Chureca”–otherwise known as the Managua City Dump.
Originally the second site for this project was to be in Mexico, but we requested a change to Managua to help us establish what we hope will become a long-term partnership with a women’s sewing cooperative. Ciudad Sandino is a slum city with an estimated population of about 70,000. La Chureca has a population of about 1,500. In both sites we found many of the families illegally tapping into the electric power grid. As in slum cities around the world, bootleg power there is often intermittent. When the lights go out people revert to kerosene and candles to light their homes and businesses.
Bootleg Power, La Chureca – Managua, Nicaragua
For these clients we wanted to develop a light source that could be easily manufactured out of locally available materials. During the design phase of this project, while we were interviewing both rural “off-grid” families in Guatemala and urban slum dwellers in Nicaragua, we learned that many people, even the poorest, had cell phones. In 2007 – 2008 this was a revelation. Cell phones were becoming ubiquitous in the most distant parts of the planet—and they were becoming so cheap that even people in dire poverty thought of them as “throw-away” technology when they didn’t work anymore. For example, in 2008 in Guatemala you could purchase a simple new cell phone for about $12.00 U.S. and a used one for as little as $4.20 U.S.
This meant that there were a great many discarded cellphones, and ATC and our local technicians designed and built a light for use by slum city dwellers that is very inexpensive and made primarily from recycled cell phone parts. The idea for the light is simple. Using a recycled cell phone and battery the light draws power when power is available. When the power goes out the light runs on the battery. Circuits built into cell phone batteries protect them from overcharging. Modern cell phone chargers are very efficient, making this an energy efficient technology to replace kerosene lamps. Schematics and instructions for how to build this light from recycled parts will be posted soon on our website at www.apptechdesign.org.
The Importance of Access to Technology for Charging Cellphones::
Before attempting to introduce new technology into a culture, it is important to understand its social implications. It was a revelation to us when we learned just how important cellphone communication is to our clients in this project. The major cell phone provider in Central America, TIGO, has a program where people receive phone calls for free. Many of the rural poor in Guatemala could afford to buy a cell phone, and they wanted to keep their phones on all day long just in case someone called. This created a new problem for people living off the grid, because now they often had to walk to the nearest grid-connected village, often an hour or two away, in order to charge their phone. After paying a nominal fee, they waited while their phone was charged and then hiked back home. All in all this process could take the better part of a day. Cell phones, we discovered, are causing the rural poor to waste valuable time. That is why we decided to add a cell phone charging circuit to our solar home lighting system. Based on responses from our clients they view the cell phone charging circuit as just as important as the light.
D. Application
By developing lower-cost alternatives to kerosene light for residents of low-income countries, we have provided a way to improve health outcomes for potentially billions of people around the world. We have verified our hypothesis that our solar home lighting system is superior in many ways to kerosene lamps and candles. The intensity of the light is better; the health risks are nullified; and so is the damage to the environment that is currently being caused by carbon emissions of between 100-150 million tons per year resulting from 1.6 billion people using kerosene fuel and candles.[i]
More to the point, providing people with adequate light and power for their homes is a direct route out of poverty through enabling people to read, study, learn, and work during nighttime hours. In the case of the population we worked with, women will be able to increase their family’s income by producing more weavings to sell at the market, thus using new technology to better preserve their culture.
When manufactured on a larger scale, our lights for slum dwellers will keep cellphones out of dumps and put their valuable components to work in a new way to improve quality of life for people who live in densely populated areas. This population, too, will be able to better climb out of poverty with the help of a dependable lighting system and radio and cellphone communication.
E. Future
We will publish the details of this project online at www.apptechdesign.org, giving nonprofits and small businesses access to an inexpensive, complete household solar lighting system. We will provide a list of materials; installation schematics and recommendations for how to finance a solar lighting program. With this information nonprofits, business incubators, individuals and governmental organizations will be able to start and maintain programs that provide financing, manufacturing, and distribution of these lights, perhaps establishing microbusinesses in low-income countries to provide jobs. We will also be notifying major NGOs that this information is available in the hopes that they will widely distribute this technology for the billions of people in the world who can make use of it.
In 2012 we will hold two workshops on solar home lighting design in Guatemala. As part of an effort to raise awareness among U.S. students about the needs of people in low-income countries, ATC is inviting engineering students from the U.S.A. to partner with local technical school students to design and install home-scale solar lighting systems. The workshops will be based on what we have learned about solar home lighting systems from this project–their relatively low cost and great benefits.
We believe that the high-efficiency circuit board that we developed for this project is a technological breakthrough that can have positive implications on the development of many other forms of alternative energy sources. Our design is “state of the art,” featuring the most recently developed components. The price of production can only go down from here: the prices for light emitting diodes and for solar panels are decreasing. Technology is changing so fast that the design we ended up with is half the cost of our original design and it produces just as much light.
We believe there is a large untapped market for solar home lighting here in the U.S., and there is even greater demand globally because:
1. population is growing faster than electrification in many low-income countries;
2. kerosene prices are going up. Our main competitor for lighting rural off-grid homes is kerosene. In a world where the market for kerosene is expanding and the supply is steady or decreasing the price will inevitably go up.[ii]
We are currently developing a business plan in order to sell LED solar lights in the U.S. so we can underwrite our efforts as a nonprofit to get the technology out into low-income countries through communications and partnering with other organizations. Based on our recent experience publishing the designs of a treadle pump for rural farmers and a solar vaccine refrigerator that can be built from locally available parts in low-income countries, we believe the Lindbergh sponsored solar lighting design will be taken up by dozens of nonprofits around the globe. [NB – Our treadle pump and solar vaccine refrigerator technical drawings have been downloaded over 3,000 times. Nonprofits from 23 countries have built our designs or are planning to build them in the near future]
This project provides the technical expertise for NGOs, governments, businesses and individuals to create low cost, high value home lighting systems that save money, reduce green house gas emissions and improve the quality of life wherever they are used.
[i] World Bank (2010)
[ii] World Bank “Solar Lighting for the Base of the Pyramid – Overview of an Emerging Market” (2010): 23
