Originally published February 15 2006
India's poor receive support from solar-powered lamp initiative
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Christian Science Monitor reports on the Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), a Bombay-based non-governmental organization that has installed LED solar-powered lamps that greatly benefit India's rural poor.
Until just three months ago, life in this humble village without electricity would come to a grinding halt after sunset.
That all changed with the installation of low-cost, energy-efficient lamps that are powered entirely by the sun.
The innovative lights were installed by the Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), a Bombay-based nongovernmental organization focused on bringing light to rural India.
LED lighting, like cellphones, is another example of a technology whose low cost could allow the rural poor to leapfrog into the 21st century.
The fuel is dangerous, dirty, and - despite being subsidized - consumes nearly 4 percent of a typical rural Indian household's budget.
A recent report by the Intermediate Technology Development Group suggests that indoor air pollution from such lighting media results in 1.6 million deaths worldwide every year.
LED lamps, or more specifically white LEDS, are believed to 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).
At $55 each, the lamps installed in nearly 300 homes by GSBF cost nearly half the price of other solar lighting systems.
As calculations revealed, these families can afford to purchase a solid state lighting system in just over a year of paying per week what they would normally spend on candles and paraffin - if they have access to micro-credit.
Villagers are educated by GSBF officials to make the most of the new lamps.
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