Rocky Mountain Institute is contributing to a unique project that is delivering renewable power and lighting up homes in the Mexican Sierra Madre.
The Portable Light Project is an initiative that mixes technology with the traditional cultural values of nomadic communities, to provide renewable and portable power to areas without centralized electricity supplies.
The project brings advanced photovoltaic (PV) technologies to indigenous communities in the developing world, supplying them sufficient amounts of light without the reliance of attaching to power lines or grid.
The idea combines lightweight solar or PV cells -- which take in energy from the sun -- with light-emitting diodes that are then attached to the surface of a fabric.
This fabric can be incorporated onto a bag or clothing, as examples, which is carried around or worn in daylight hours -- effectively charging up the portable light for later use.
A single portable light unit can also provide enough power to charge a cell phone and provide bright, white light to support community-based education and household economic development.
"The Portable Light Project demonstrates how nanotechnology can benefit not only the "third" world -- where more than 2 billion people currently do not have access to electricity -- but also the "first" world, where energy-efficient design is increasingly important," said Sheila Kennedy, an architect from Kennedy & Violich Architecture (KVA) which is leading the Portable Light team.
RMI has been working with KVA and a group of anthropologists, engineers and doctors on the project.
Together, they developed the portable light concept and tailored it to the communities by incorporating it into traditional fabric products.
The units can produce up to eight hours of light from a three-hour solar charge.
Additionally, according to Kennedy, the units can be mass-produced economically. One of the first deployments of the lights was to serve the needs of the indigenous Huichol (Wirrárica) people who live in remote areas of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains of Mexico.
Like many parts of the world that do not have access to electricity, it is considered economically unfeasible and ecologically unsound to construct a centralized electrical grid in the Sierra Madre.
UNESCO and the WWF have designated the Sierra Madre as a "priority area for conservation" and it is important to examine new approaches to renewable energy for these environmentally sensitive territories.
The Portable Light team in conjunction with RMI plans to continue developing the technology to expand its benefits to other indigenous communities.
To view a photo gallery of this project, click here
Become part of the initiative -- donate to the Portable Light Project
For more information on the Portable Light Project, please see, www.portablelight.org.
