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Let There Be Light: Solar-Powered LED Lamps Brighten Lives of Poor People

By Larry West

Solar-powered LED lamps could save lives, lower costs, create new opportunities
An experiment with low-cost, solar-powered light emitting diode (LED) lamps that is 
lighting up the lives of a handful of families in rural India could become a beacon of 
hope for millions of poor people worldwide who currently rely on kerosene lamps and 
other lighting solutions that are toxic--and frequently lethal--when used indoors.

Solar Lighting Eliminates the Need for Electricity in Rural Areas
The Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), a Bombay-based nongovernmental 
organization that is committed to bringing light to rural India, installed the $55 lamps in 
about 300 homes. About 100,000 villages in India still do not have electricity, and the 
cost of lighting those villages by traditional means is prohibitive. The solar LED 
technology eliminates the need for electric lights. After the initial cost, solar energy 
continues to light the lamps free of charge.

“Children can now study at night, elders can manage their chores better," one relieved 
villager told The Christian Science Monitor. "Life doesn't halt anymore when darkness 
falls.”

LED Lamps Provide Safer and Better Light For Less
Replacing kerosene lamps with clean solar-powered LED lamps also provides healthier 
and safer living conditions as well as better light for less money. According to The 
Christian Science Monitor, about 1.5 billion people worldwide use kerosene to light their 
homes, but the fuel is dangerous.

Separate reports by the Intermediate Technology Development Group and the World 
Health Organization indicate that indoor air pollution from kerosene and similar fuels 
used for indoor lighting and cooking cause more than 1.5 million deaths annually. The 
risk of fire is another significant health hazard with kerosene lamps.

Kerosene Expensive and Dangerous
Kerosene is also expensive for people living in poverty. In rural India, for example, 
buying kerosene requires nearly 4 percent of a typical household budget. Finally, LED 
lamps are simply more efficient and provide more useful light. According to The Christian 
Science Monitor, LED lamps 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 solar-powered LED 
technology to light nearly 10,000 homes in 27 developing countries.

Strategies Needed to Reduce the Initial Cost of LED Solar Lamps
For the program to work long-term in India, GSBF says it will be necessary to lower the 
cost of the LED lamps by manufacturing them inside India instead of importing them 
from China and elsewhere. Manufacturing the lamps locally would lower the cost from 
$55 to $22 per unit, but building a factory would cost approximately $5 million, and 
investment capital is not easy to find.

The Light Up The World Foundation brings ultra-efficient, durable and near permanent 
White Light Emitting Diodes (WLED) lighting solutions powered by renewable energy to 
the world's poor in ecologically sensitive and remote rural areas.

Light Up The World Foundation (LUTW) is an international humanitarian organization 
dedicated to illuminating the lives of the world's poor. It is the first organization to utilize 
solid-state lighting technologies to bring affordable, safe, healthy, efficient, and 
environmentally responsible lighting to people currently without access to proper 
lighting. LUTW is the world's leader in the advancement and diffusion of this technology 
for development purposes and remains globally active in setting standards in this field.

Since inception, through the generous support from interested individuals, host country 
organizations, international foundations and industrial partners, LUTW has lit up more 
than 14,000 homes in 42 countries. LUTW projects have brought tangible gains to 
communities enhancing their health and safety, fostering local education, developing an 
economic infrastructure and protecting the physical environment. Over 100,000 people 
have been impacted directly by LUTW's work. LUTW has won international acclaim for its 
technological and social innovations. LUTW's goal of reaching the approximately 2 billion 
people worldwide without access to adequate lighting is ongoing.

Dr. Dave Irvine-Halliday, a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Calgary, 
had in 1997 the vision to use LED lighting to bring practical, economical, and 
environmentally safe lighting to the developing world.

Dr. Irvine-Halliday envisioned LUTW during his sabbatical in Nepal where he was helping 
the Institute of Engineering, University of Tribhuvan, Kathmandu develop its electrical 
engineering degree programme.

While trekking the Annapurna Circuit he visited local villages and was struck by the poor 
conditions of the people. Most of them were relying on kerosene lamps which produced 
little light and filled the homes with dangerous smoke. As the annual income of the 
Nepalese villagers averaged $200 USD Dave realized that there was a great need for 
simple, safe, healthy, affordable and rugged lighting.

Dave, who had been working with LEDs for more than two decades, spent most of 1997 
and 1998 trying to make an acceptable white light from various combinations of colored 
indicator LEDs. He made white light but it was simply not bright enough to be of any 
practical use in the developing world. Around the end of 1998 Dave discovered that 
Nichia, a Japanese company, had invented the White LED a few years earlier and he 
immediately requested that they send him samples. When he and his technician, John 
Shelley, lit their very first White LED it was most definitely the “Eureka” moment – “Good 
God John, a child could read by the light of a single diode”.

In 1999 Dave and his wife Jenny tested their prototype WLED lamps in a number of Nepali 
villages and the response from the villagers was so absolutely positive that they knew 
what they’d be doing with the rest of their lives.  

In 2000, Dave, Jenny and their son Gregor returned to Kathmandu and with the assistance 
of their Nepali friend, Muni Raj Upadhyaya, lit the first three villages in the world with 
WLED lighting, thus laying the pioneering origins for the development of LUTW into a 
global lighting initiative.

Together with Ken Robertson, Roy Moore and Pauline Cummings the Light Up The World 
Foundation was legally established in 2002. From a singular idea born among the poor, 
LUTW has grown into a global humanitarian organization reaching out to even the 
remotest areas of the world.

1)
What inspired Dave Irvine-Halliday to found the Light up the World Foundation?

2)
Why hadn’t something like this been done earlier?

3)
How has LUTW impacted villagers in India?  (Give details.)