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The Bottom Three Billion: How One Clean Tech Company Serves the Poor
In 2007, a married couple with well-paid tech jobs in Singapore saw a prototype of a Japanese electric car and had a revelation. An electric car could be run for a tenth the price of a comparable one fueled by gas. The couple wondered: Could they create an electric motorbike for the masses in their home country of India?“This hit my mind like anything. This is the future,” Pachyappa Bala, the husband of the couple, remembered thinking at the time.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- renewable energy
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In India, Solar Ambitions Are Suddenly Outsize
After years of lagging behind China and the West in the adoption of solar power, some states in India are proposing to build solar farms at a galloping pace that leaves them at risk of falling short of electricity (a familiar problem here) or of paying higher prices for it.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- solar
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GravityLight: the low-cost lamp powered by sand and gravity
Two London designers have developed a gravity-powered lamp that could sell for as little as £3, bringing light to remote regions in developing countries
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Tags
- renewable energy
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Solar Now, Water Later: An Interview With Sunsaluter’s Eden Full
Twenty-year-old Eden Full, who has been tinkering with solar technology for more than half of her young life, saw these dual challenges and designed a dual-purpose system that uses mechanical water flow to control the rotation of a solar panel to meet them. The SunSaluter, winner of the Mashable-UN Foundation Startups for Social Good Challenge, is a low-cost solar tracker and water filtration system.
- Categories
- Energy
- Tags
- interviews, renewable energy, solar
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The Next Million: Grameen Shakti – an innovative model for rural energy business
A small group of people began experimenting how to bring solar electricity to rural Bangladesh and in 1996 started its first rural renewable energy service company – Grameen Shakti – which literally translates to rural energy. The company installed 20 solar systems by the end of 1996, 2,800 systems after a decade of growth, and on Nov. 30, 2012 – 16 years after its launch – installed a total of 1 million solar systems in village homes, schools, clinics and businesses.
- Categories
- Energy
- Tags
- renewable energy, scale, solar
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A Light Bulb Goes On: A Major Innovation in Asset Finance: M-KOPA’s model could illuminate other sectors
The creators of M-KOPA , which sells solar base stations that can charge phones, power lights, and other limited applications, has come up with one of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in the mobile money space in some time.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Tags
- solar
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How to Light Africa Within a Decade
Today, when the sun goes down in Africa, over 150 million homes will not turn on the lights. The reason is simple: they don’t have electricity. Instead, they will extend their day by the dim light of kerosene lamps. Families will huddle around these lamps, inhaling the lung-burning equivalent of two packs of cigarettes each from kerosene fumes.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Panasonic lanterns ‘to regain market’
Osaka, Dec 10 (bdnews24.com) – Electronics giant Panasonic will launch solar lanterns for un-electrified areas in developing countries by early next year as it shifts its businesses to eco-technologies to bring back the losing markets by 2018, its 100th anniversary.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Region
- South Asia
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