- 01/18/2012
The Regional Office team is on the move again. This time to a different region in the Amazon to evaluate partners, potential projects and to do our first solar home system installs in the region.Click on the date link above to read more.
- 01/06/2012
2012 has been declared the year of Sustainable Energy for All. Read the vision statement by the Secretary General of the UN, to learn why energy access has the potential to improve the social and economic well-being for billions of people.
- 12/21/2011
The LUTW team in Peru is back from the field! Some highlights from their trip:
- Five technicians trained, incuding our first female technician in Peru
- 21 installations in the annexes of Santiago Belen Anta and seven in the community Ccenta. Click on the date link above to read more.
SAIT Students
Four Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) students have been harnessing the sun’s power to provide light to people in developing countries who do not have access to electricity.
Inspired by Light Up the World, an organization that has brought LED (light-emitting diode) lighting to countries across the globe, Chris McDiarmid, Christine Nickel, Trevor Schwartzenberger and Marc Tardioli started the SAIT Global Lighting Initiative to design and build their own lighting unit.
“There are billions of people in the world who use kerosene lamps as their only source of light after dark,” says Nickel. “Unfortunately, kerosene lamps produce very little light, are expensive to run and fill homes with dangerous smoke.”
“As our course project, we decided to see how we could also help bring practical, economic and environmentally safe lighting to those who need it,” says McDiarmid.
Their working prototype has a solar-charged battery that, in turn, powers a LED light source.
“This is just the start of what we hope will be an ongoing project involving EET students at SAIT,” says Schwartzenberger. “While we have created the basic design of the unit, there is scope to increase the efficiency of the prototype.”
Tardioli adds: “It’s exciting knowing how much potential this project has to help improve the quality of so many peoples’ lives.”
According to the team’s instructor, Darko Stelkic from the MacPhail School of Energy, providing light to communities without access to the power grid can enhance education, communications and health while reducing expenses and dependence on fossil fuels.
“In the remote Ecuadorian Amazon, providing renewable energy systems has promoted family-community ownership and resulted in local people being trained to ensure long-term sustainability of the equipment. And in Sierra Leone, schools that have installed LED light units have benefited the entire community by providing much needed light in the evening to village groups, as well as students,” says Stelkic.
At the EET Second Year Project Showcase in April, the SAIT Global Lighting Initiative was marked highest overall by EET instructors among 20 projects. Darko anticipates that by this time next year, EET students will reach their goal of lighting up lives by installing a LED system in a community in a developing country.