 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Chetan Singh Solanki, I am faculty at Department of Energy Science and Engineering and I have done my PhD in solar energy technologies way back in 2004, so last 15 years I am working on this technology and I have been trained to develop the technology on solar cell. What also we are doing at IIT Bombay is I am heading what is called NCPRE which you people visited, National Center for Photovoltaic Research and Education where we are really kind of researching on the very fundamental aspects of the materials, solar cell design, fabrication of solar cell, module, reliability of modules, power electronics, whatever under the sun that you need to know from right from the material till the integration with the generation of power and integration with the grid, everything we are doing it. But as I said what I am not going to talk to you is about technology, lot of us actually develop a really wonderful technologies but not every technology reaches to the people and therefore this experience that I am going to share with you with my colleague Prasad Jainder and we have been working on this project together for many years now is an example of how that can be done. All right, so the project is called Solar Urja Lamp project, Sol and it is really touching to the souls of millions and millions of students. So Solar Urja Lamp is actually the lamp is for the study purpose but before that let me give you the background that there are 17 sustainable development goals, you might be aware about it. One of the goal that is goal number 7 is a very important goal, what it says is ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. It is about energy but it touches every other sustainable development goal, whether it is about the poverty, whether it is about literacy, GDP, income, empowerment or even climate change, everything has a relationship with this goal number 7. So basically I wanted to tell in 2017 what are the status of the world, you know, 1 billion people still did not have access to electricity, 1 billion is almost 13-14 percent of the world population, 2.8 billion people did not have access to clean cooking, 40 percent of the world population. So they would be using biomass, cow dung, wood, coal kind of things, you know. Can you imagine the scenario that we are in the modern, the most modern world and we have all kind of technologies reaching to the moon and Mars and what not but 40 percent of the people in the world still do not have access to clean cooking. The worst problem is use of energy is also affecting the climate change. So whatever action that we do using energy, it is affecting the climate change. And we need energy because energy drives our growth but on the other hand, energy is also resulting in the climate change. So these are the two opposite ends of the problem. Also for Indian perspective particularly but actually not only India's perspective, many countries are passing through the phase that they are, most of the population is very young, almost 30 percent people in India are very young. We need a lot of energy, you know. There is a population growth that requires energy. There is a GDP growth that requires more and more energy. And India also imports a lot of energy from outside by the way. You know, we are one of the biggest importer of coal. We import oil, we import gas, we import, you know, nuclear fuel, all kind of things. The current per unit capital electricity consumption is almost about 1000 units. And if you go by the average of the world that is about 3,500 units, you need 800,000 megawatt of power plant capacity in India. Right now we are about 350,000 megawatt. So again, huge capacity addition is required. Why I am putting this context? Because you should understand that this path, if you continue to walk on this path, you know, it is not really going to give you sustainable solution. Why this lamp, which I'm going to talk about is very important because the education is very enabler, a great enabler in every country. And in India particularly, a lot of students in a rural area are almost more than 70 percent. And if you look at the number of enrollment of the students in the urban area and rural area, you'll find that the drop out rates. I mean, the curve is much steeper, the yellow one is much steeper for the students from the rural area as compared to urban area. Now, there can be many reasons for that, you know, there is access to the school itself, the teacher, the quality, everything. But one of the reason that plays a role here is availability of electricity. Until, unless the reliable electricity solutions are available to them, it doesn't work, the continuity of education is not there. So, as a result of that, many countries around the world, what people do is provide them solar lamps. Why? Because solar lamps are very simple, stand alone device. You can buy it and supply it and you can supply it in a very quick way. So, if somebody really wants to provide a basic light, it can be done using solar lamp. And everybody has been doing it, right, in India, or in why India, everywhere in the world. So, if you look at the first kind of solar lamp came in India in 1976. So, it is almost more than a four decade that such a programs have been happening. But it was not very successful and that is where the innovation that we have done in terms of the technology, in terms of the operations, in terms of the materials, in terms of the supply chain, everything is very important. That is what I am going to share with you. Before that, let me show you a small video to put the whole thing in a context. This is behind the strength and relationship of India, our village. Gandhi Ji had said that the future of India is hidden in his village. Gandhi Ji, we all live in this. Through his research projects, many people have been contributing to the development of the country. In my mind, it always used to be that, how can we use the education and technology that we have studied. And many children who live in villages, who are unable to afford light in the evening to study. If we can use such children using solar energy, using solar lamps to arrange electricity for their studies, then it will be a very good thing. In our project Million Light Project, we are trying to reach up to 10 lakh children using solar lamps. In this project, in particular, we are involving the people of the village, in which the people of the village make lamps. The people of the village are the ones who make lamps. And the people of the village also work on repair and maintenance. All right, could you notice what is the solution? Solution is of course solar lamp. But the way we provide solar lamp is very important. And as I mentioned that, what we do is we involve local communities to do each and everything. But how we have come to this idea, I would like to share two kind of project which did not work very well. One of the project that I started in 2008 and 2009, Ekal Vidyalaya is like one school teacher. And these are the very informal schools, runs in a very remote rural areas, where children go to the field in the daytime and they could not access to the regular schools. So they actually go to the schools in the evening. And when I went first time to this village and in the middle of somewhere, we stopped. And I said, probably we lost the road. He said, no sir, the place where it is trending is actually road. So you could not even figure out the ways to reaching of these villages. And there are many villages like that. I found it, what people used to do is study like this in kerosene lamp. And so this Ekal Vidyalaya is what people do. They will take the kerosene lamp, they will walk to the school. The school is very informal as I said. In somebody's house, they gather together and study in the kerosene. So what we have done is, we have provided them a solar lamp. Now at that time, this lamp, as you can see here, is about 5 watt CFL based lamp. And around 20 people, 25 people could sit. And we got a sponsorship at that time and we provided solar lamps to some 500 villages. This went to many places. So in UP, in Madhya Pradesh, even this photo I think belongs to Tamil Nadu somewhere. So there are like, it was very nicely distributed. And as every other solar lamp program, there was a lot of fun fair that project implemented. 500 villages, so many students are using this. One of the problem of this kind of approach was that the light was not reaching everywhere. So we did small experimentation. Why don't we put it above the ground? Then as soon as you put above the ground, then you will have the shading problem that the base will actually shade the light everywhere else. So then we said, why don't we hang it upside down? So what I have done is, I have separated the base of the lamp. These are very old photographs, some of them got access. And then we connected another wire and the light was hung on the top. So in that way, the distribution was better. Well, these are some of the experiment that we did. But within five months, six months, seven months, the lamp stopped functioning. Sometimes the battery will not be charged. Fuse will not be working. Or even if some people tell us that my lamp is not working, we couldn't do anything because there is no way we could reach out to so many different places. At the same time, I did another project, as I said, with the Teri, the Light of Billion Lives project, where the whole model was a little different. What in this model was that you actually create a central charging station, charge all your lamps at one place. The user will actually pay the rent for using it. So the user will come to the center, take the lamp in the evening, the charged lamp, use it overnight, and then bring it back in the morning so that it can be charged again. So I did three villages with this kind of model, my village and the neighboring villages. But after five, six months, one year, it was same. The lamp stopped working. Nobody would come to repair. Lamp was also expensive so people could not afford it. So in 2012, one of the problems that I identified is this mechanism of buy and sell. What everyone will do, state governments, central government, NGOs, those who were running the program, they would buy and sell as a result of that the product will become expensive. Why? Because somebody will make it, somebody will buy it, then it will be transported. Second problem, I figured out that there's no technical support. So many times the lamp is a very simple device and the problems that were with the lamp are very simple. Like sometimes the fuse will not be working. So you need to change the fuse. Sometimes the soldering point will get off. So you need to solder it again. Sometimes the battery will not be properly charged. So it's a very simple thing. But as a result of this, the products will actually fail prematurely. They will not work throughout the life. And that is the case not only with the solar lamp but all kind of solar product. It is the same story. The third problem is every time because we are buying and selling, the continuity is not there. So if somebody is buying and providing 500 lamps, if somebody wants to buy one more lamp, 501, it is not available. As a result of that, the solar solution never becomes a continuous availability is not there. You understood everyone? So this is a basic problem. Not only this technology, I believe with every technology. Your mobile phones are working everywhere because you find some guy who can actually give recharge of 10 rupees also. You can find some guy who can actually repair a phone in every corner. So similar thing was required. And not only required, then we also found that even if there is electricity connection in the houses of people, still solar lamp is required because when we are talking about study purpose, for studying you need about 150 lux of light. And the lux is a unit of light. You measure how much lux is there. So for example, on your table, you will have something like about 150 lux of light. So that is kind of intensity that you need. We measured this in various houses, almost more than 2,000 houses. We measured this in various states like Punjab, Haryana, UP, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh. What we found among 2000 households, that majority of them will have the light level very, very low. What does it tell you that even if there is electricity, there is not sufficient light on the book. And in villages, there is no table chair. So the distance between the light and the floor will be higher. The light will be typically hang in between the two rooms. So therefore, it will be distributed to wider areas. And another problem, even if there is electricity connection, the supply is not continuous. So there is fluctuation in voltage. There is a fluctuation in the availability of the power. There is a power cuts, all those kind of things will be happening. So together, first of all, when there is no electricity, we need a solution. Even if there is a full electricity 24 by 7, we need a solution. And even if there is a partial electricity, we need a solution. But the solution should actually solve the problem of affordability, availability and repairability. So that is what our lamp came in picture, that if you look at the needs of people, and there is a energy ladder, so people need electricity or energy for basic purpose lighting. One basic lighting like torch and the flashlight that you use. Once that is completed, people would like to eliminate every room, every house. Once that is there, you would like to have fan. You would like to have refrigerator, TV. Then you would like to, of course, irrigate their forms. And then finally, if more energy is available, you will use it for the production purpose. You run some manufacturing, you do some processing. So this is the entire energy ladder that we needed to work. But one of the most basic thing is providing them light for study purpose. As I told you earlier, that we wanted to solve this problem of access to the light so that everybody can study well. Now the three problems that I have told you, we thought there could be three solutions. It's a solution included, how do we find and make the product affordable? How do we involve the local community and how do we saturate the area with which we work? By the way, the program for 1 million solar lamps, that we thought we implemented from IIT Bombay. 1 million is a big number by any standard. And we wanted to do it in one year time. So therefore, the speed of the whole operation, the scale of the whole operation and the skill level that required in the local community was very important aspect of it.