Rural villagers in Nepal rely on kerosene lamps to light their homes, and they aren’t the only ones to do so. Worldwide, around 1.6 billion people—most of them in developing countries—don’t have access to electricity and must rely on fuel-based sources for lighting.
Inadequate lighting represents a significant barrier to future development, according to David Irvine-Halliday, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Calgary in Canada and founder of the Light Up the World Foundation. LUTW is a nonprofit organization that distributes solid-state lighting systems to rural villages all over the world, including Nepal, Tibet, Pakistan, India, Ghana, and Sri Lanka. It relies on donations from individuals and corporate partners and on support from host countries and other international foundations.
The foundation’s global lighting solution is a combination of two 1-W white light-emitting-diode lamps coupled with a 5-W solar panel and a lead-acid battery, although some systems use...
