The Nuru light requires no fossil fuel and can be recharged by anyone capable of riding a bicycle
(AlertNet)- Until recently, when Mugirasomi Vestine needed to feed her baby at night, she stumbled around in the dark in her home, trying to light her kerosene lamp.
Now, though, she can simply flip a switch when she needs light - and turn on a battery-powered lamp charged with bicycle-style pedaling.
It has "changed our lives," said Vestine, who lives in Rwanda's Bugesera district. Before, "I was burned by kerosene and sometimes my baby was burned too. With the Nuru light we no longer have such problems."
Finding sustainable sources of energy is crucial around the world, particularly as countries try to balance the need for improved access to power with curbing growth of climate-changing carbon emissions.
The Nuru light may be one answer. The invention of Sameer Hajee, a Canadian electrical engineer and social entrepreneur with Kenyan and Indian roots, the lights require no fossil fuel and can be recharged by anyone capable of riding a bicycle.
The recharging machine Â? the Powercycle - is a simple invention: two cycle pedals fitted to a box which charges up to five lights at a time using pedal-power. The $150 machine is typically bought by an entrepreneur with micro-finance loans, which are then paid off by charging customers to recharge the lights.
TWENTY MINUTE RIDE FOR LIGHT
After a full recharge - which takes around 20 minutes of pedaling - each light has sufficient power to provide night-time lighting needs for an average of 10 days, Hajee said; in Rwanda, the cost of a recharge is about 27 U.S. cents. Typically buyers are able to pay off their loans in about six months, he said.
Murebwayire Godence, who owns the Nuru light recharging machine in Vestine's village in Rwanda, said she already has 67 customers, but thinks she can manage a five-fold increase by the end of 2010.
The lights can be used to help children study at night, to look after a baby after dark, to take to the toilet and so on, users said.
With the lights, "my children no longer take a long journey back to school at night to study for their exams," Vestine said. "They all now read happily at home."
The invention won Hajee the U.N. Environmental Program Sasakawa Prize for 2009-2010. The $200,000 prize honours grassroots sustainable innovation projects that charge lives and can be replicated around the world.
Hajee, formerly a microprocessor design engineer in California's Silicon Valley and a telecom engineer for Roshan, Afghanistan's first mobile phone network provider, said he planned to use the prize money to scale up distribution of the Nuru in Rwanda, Kenya and India.
He said he was delighted to be "helping to overcome poverty with a simple tool."
Marianne de Nazareth is a freelance journalist based in Bangalore, India.
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