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This Solar Innovation by a Swedish Artist Uses Surprisingly Simple Technology to Save Lives
Petra Wadström, a Swedish designer and artist now in her 60s, doesn’t have an engineering background. Back in 2005, when she came up with the idea for Solvatten—a piece of equipment that makes contaminated water safe to drink—she also didn’t know much about solar power.
- Categories
- Energy, Health Care, Technology
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Your Cheap Solar Lamp is Garbage
It’s easy to think of “the poor” in two-dimensional, homogenous terms and rattle off assumptions like "They’re poor people, aren’t they happy with anything?" or "Isn’t something better than nothing?" Incorrect. As the charity research organization SolarAid once put it, “The quickest way to fix a problem is the best,” and in most cases, that means quality.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Tags
- Base of the Pyramid, solar
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Uganda’s Kiira Motors Unveils ‘Africa’s First Solar Bus’
A solar-powered bus described by its Ugandan makers as the first in Africa has been driven in public.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A New Roadmap for Power Africa
An ambitious new road map released last week lays out how Power Africa, the United States government initiative to increase power generation capacity and access to electricity in Africa, will achieve its targets by 2030. The report outlines areas of new emphasis for the initiative, including a greater focus on energy access and on renewables.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Powerhive Is Bringing Clean Energy to the Developing World—With Prepaid Solar
The remote village of Monomoni, Kenya, is too far from cities and too sparsely populated to be part of the national grid. Now, however, it's possible for a family of cow herders or a small business to buy prepaid solar power through a mobile phone.
- Categories
- Energy
- Tags
- renewable energy, solar
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East African Company Moving From Selling Only Solar Energy to ‘Everything’
For the last four years Kenya-based consumer finance company M-KOPA has enabled 300,000 low-income earners in East Africa to acquire home solar energy systems using its pay-as-you-go model.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- renewable energy, solar
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Acumen Acquire SolarAid’s Off Grid Energy Research and Impact Division
Acumen, the global social impact organization, announced today its acquisition of the award-winning Research and Impact division of SolarAid, the international nonprofit and leading impact practitioner in the solar energy sector. In acquiring SolarAid’s research arm, Acumen builds on its decade of investing in off-grid energy, further deepening its understanding of the energy needs of low-income populations while measuring the social impact of newly electrified individuals and households. Acumen began investing in off-grid energy solutions in 2007 and today has the largest portfolio of companies committed to serving the poor.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Why This $5 Million May Matter Most for Off Grid Electric
When it received a $5 million award from the U.S. Agency for International Development last month, Off Grid Electric became the first company to receive all three rounds of funding from the Development Innovation Ventures program.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- renewable energy, solar