ON Semiconductor Is Changing Energy Poverty With Sponsorship of IEEE Empower a Billion Lives Competition

By Ali Husain  

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of observing the Empower a Billion Lives (EBL) Global Finals, held alongside the IEEE Energy Conversion Conference & Expo (ECCE). EBL is an organization under the IEEE Power Electronics Society, which focuses on ending energy poverty with a mission to promote sustainable, scalable and creative models for providing electric power to the 1.1 billion people unconnected to the electricity grid.

EBL promotes energy access through its competition announced in 2018, with an online round consisting of a proposal and three minute video pitch. The submissions were filtered and qualifying teams were invited the regional rounds, organized locally by volunteers and held in Georgia (USA), Spain, South Africa, India and China. Twenty-three incredibly dedicated teams were selected in the regional rounds and invited to the finals. It was a diverse group of contestants with teams comprised of students, companies and non-governmental, non-profit organizations.

The solutions were diverse as well, with business models involving DC microgrids, agricultural productivity enhancing innovations and even battery delivery services. One common thread through many of the proposals was pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) using mobile money. Modeled to help customers who cannot afford the up-front costs of solar panels, batteries and sometimes even the LED light that the electricity powers. The PAYGO model allows them to get the infrastructure needed and reap the productivity, quality of life and even cost benefit of electricity. For example, the weekly payment for the equipment is still lower than the cost of kerosene which would be used to light the home in the evenings. The family gets cleaner, steadier light and reduces their cost over time. Finally, in several years, the equipment will become paid off and owned by the customer. The incredible drop in prices for solar panels and Li-Ion batteries has made such business models possible.

Team SoULS from IIT, Mumbai received the $100,000 grand prize for bringing business, manufacturing and entrepreneurial skills to women in villages across India with open source designs and local assembly for solar lights and other devices. This structure allowed the people of the village participate in the value chain, keeping resources in the community and providing capital to grow the businesses. Some women went on to open S-marts (S for Solar) where they would stock both the open source designed products from SoULS and other commercially available products. The prize money will help them scale the program and test it in other countries besides India.

This massive undertaking of the Empower a Billion Lives competition first kicked off about three years ago by Professor Deepak Divan of Georgia Tech University. His vision and tireless work inspired a fantastic group of volunteers who reviewed proposals, organized the regional competitions and put together the finals. The EBL team will then take a year to consolidate the learnings and understand the impact of the program before announcing the second call for proposals and the start of the two-year cycle of judging and field-testing. In the meantime, they will work to grow the energy access community worldwide.

Thanks to Empower a Billion Lives the movement to end energy poverty is now reaching communities across the globe with sustainable clean energy.

Read more about ON Semiconductor’s sponsorship of the Empower a Billion Lives competition.