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LED Lamps Light the Way

June, 2003

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Turn on the light. For most of us, it's second nature. Electric lighting is clean, safe, and relatively cheap. But for more than 1 billion people in underdeveloped countries, turning on the light, if it's possible at all, means lighting a smoky, dangerous kerosene lamp.

A groundbreaking partnership between Stanford University's Social Entrepreneurship Startup and the non-profit Light Up the World Foundation, is working to bring safe, affordable lighting to people in China, India, and Mexico. And in the process, 22 graduate students in business and engineering are learning invaluable lessons about product development, market research, and applied engineering that would be hard to duplicate in a traditional classroom.

In 10 short weeks, a team of Stanford students, helped by volunteer advisers from private industry, developed three business plans (one for each country) and prototypes of three LED-based lamps bright enough to read or work by at a fraction of the operating cost of fuel-based lighting such as kerosene.

During July, a team of five participants paid their own way to India where they field tested the prototypes and worked in West Bengal identifying manufacturers and distributors for the project. If funding becomes available, the team will work with the Light Up The World foundation to plan a full-scale pilot project beginning in Spring 2004.

A New Ultra-efficient Product
All the prototypes are inexpensive to manufacture and maintain, durable and, most significantly, ultra-efficient. That's because LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, produce nearly 50 times the amount of useful light per dollar produced by a conventional bulb and 200 times more useful light than a kerosene lamp.

Looked at another way, 90 percent of the energy used to power a standard bulb produces heat and 5 percent produces light. An LED is roughly the opposite. Moreover, LEDs, which are solid-state circuits made of semiconductor material, are durable—able to last for as long as 40 years. And it is much easier to use inexpensive lenses to focus light produced by an LED (think point source) than a standard or fluorescent bulb.

Headed by professors Bill Behrman and David Kelley of the School of Engineering, and James Patell of the Graduate School of Business, the Social Entrepreneurship Startup course was inspired by and builds on the work of David Irvine-Halliday, the founder of Light Up the World. Irvine-Halliday, a Scottish-born Canadian electrical engineer, hit on the idea of using LED technology to replace kerosene lamps while trekking in the Himalayas in 1997.

Within three years, 134 homes in four regions of the mountainous country were lit using LEDs powered by a mix of solar, pedal, and hydroelectric power. And because Irvine-Halliday believes that economic development projects will spread and sustain lighting technology more efficiently than giveaways, he helped start Pico Power Nepal, which now builds LED lamps in a small factory in the countryside.

From D-Cells to Solar Power
The problem Irvine-Halliday, and then the team at Stanford, set out to solve is rather like an iceberg. The most visible part of the solution, the lamp itself, turns out to be only a relatively small part of the whole. Consider the power source: Is the community on the electric grid at least part of the time—if so, a battery and a conventional recharger might do the trick. If not, pedal-powered generators might work—but only if there are enough people in each user community to justify the expense and share the labor.

Solar power works in some communities, but the students who were developing a solution for Mexico found that earlier failed attempts by the government to bring solar-powered lighting to the countryside had failed, tarnishing residents' image of solar power.

What shape should the lamp be? Should it hang from the ceiling or sit on a table? Should it be a "task" light—a reading lamp, for example—or should it provide more diffused light across a larger space?

Settle all those questions and that still leaves the question of price, including the bill for materials and the cost of assembling them into a finished product.
To make the job manageable, the spring-quarter class was divided into teams for each country. Some students concentrated on engineering tasks, others on business- or market-oriented tasks, but "there was a tremendous amount of cross-fertilization," said Patell.

At times the class resembled nothing so much as a Silicon Valley startup, with students pulling all-nighters fueled by pizza and soda while they struggled to finish an iteration (each prototype had about 10) for the next day's critique before advisers from companies including IDEO, an award-winning leading industrial design firm, and Solectron, one of the world's largest contract manufacturers.

By mid-June, three prototypes were finished:

  • El Cheapo, not surprisingly, was the cheapest of the bunch. At about $7.30, it looks like a flashlight, contains three small LEDs, and is powered by a AA NiMH battery, recharged by a photovoltaic (solar) panel on the side. El Cheapo's intended use? Task lighting for poor people without electricity in any country.
  • The Asia Light (China and India) is designed for ambient or task lighting, has adjustable optics, and uses a solar panel to recharge 2 AA NiMH batteries. An optional charger draws power from the grid when available. Cost of parts: $10.40.
  • For Mexico, the team designed a hanging plastic lamp powered by 2 D-cell batteries. Cost: $8.85. Even though villagers will need to buy batteries from time to time, the LEDs are so efficient that the average user will save about $60 a year over the cost of batteries for conventional flashlights.

None of the solutions is perfect. "They don't have to be," says Patell. "What we want to do is produce something that a nonprofit can show to a group of investors and get their attention." Similarly, the business plans are closer to proposals than economic blueprints.

Many of the students have now moved on to pursue careers or new academic challenges but work on the project continues. 'The course generated so much momentum that a group of us decided we couldn't simply walk away—there's too much to do!' said Matthew Scott, a recent MBA graduate who is continuing with the project." It lets me combine my interests in technology and business with social entrepreneurship. The class opened my eyes to the world of development."

—by Bill Snyder