Brian H. posted a very interesting comment today on the Beyond Kyoto: Council on Foreign Relations Seminar post linking to the Light Up The World Foundation (LUTW) - an effort that is definitely worth notice. A good website, good documentation on the foundation, the tech, the benefits, and the projects.
Affiliated with the University of Calgary, their initial goal is to convert developing-world kerosene lighting to LED solid state lighting. LUTW provides solutions in configurations to suit, but their most commonly used solution is a pair of 1W LED lamps + a small 5W solar panel + a sealed lead-acid battery, at a capital cost of around $100.
It is a really good example of solving a real problem (costly, polluting fueled lighting), with an affordable and practical technology. I’m familiar with off-grid energy solutions - this is "suitable tech", very well thought out.
There are a number of project case studies documented on their site. A good example is the
David Wiwchar Lighting Project Phase II for Costa Rica Chirripo region. David says villagers are seeing about a one year payback time (system costs are subsidized by LUTW).
The LUTW site does not justify any of the following figures - I surmise they are describing the benefits resulting from converting 100% of global lighting applications to solid state LED:
Use of LED Based Lighting:
- Has the potential of decreasing the global amount of electricity used for lighting by 50%.
- Decrease the total global consumption of electricity by 10%.
- Create global reductions of 1,100 Billion kWh/year of electricity ($100B/year).
- Free over 125 GW of electric generating capacity for other uses, saving about $50B in construction costs.
- Reduce global carbon emissions by 200M tons/year.
I plan to look into LUTW further - thanks Brian!
Welcome! I’ve been following these guys for a couple of years, and would like to see more “human interest” success stories on their site, but the presentation has been getting more fulsome with time.
They are rigidly non-profit, but I’d like to see them, e.g., work with a flashlight maker to generate funds; the WLED flashlights are powerful and a great way to cut off the waste from D-cells etc. I’d buy one in a NY minute! I also wonder if they couldn’t collaborate with the crankable radio tech here: Baylis invention and here: product examples.
Brian,
Thanks - good links.
We have been converting to WLED flashlights (torches to us DownUnder folk) for the past couple of years. I haven’t picked up one of the conventional torches for a long time.
We particularly value the LED torches for real emergency conditions - we load them with AA Lithium batteries, for long shelf life plus long operating life when needed.