GravityLight is a gravity-powered lamp designed to provide affordable, sustainable and reliable light that enables people in developing or third-world nations, to break free from the economic, health and environmental negative impacts of kerosene lamps.
Today, over 1.5 billion people - about 21% of the world's population - have no reliable access to mains electricity and it will continue to grow. These people rely instead on biomass fuels - predominantly kerosene - for light.
The World Bank estimates that, as a result, 780 million women and children inhale smoke, which is equivalent to smoking 2 packets of cigarettes every day. 60% of adult, female lung-cancer victims in developing nations are non-smokers. These fumes kill an estimated 1.5 million women and children in Africa every year and, along with the poor quality of light, also causes eye infections and cataracts. But burning kerosene is also more immediately dangerous: in India alone 1.5 million people suffer severe burns each year, primarily due to overturned kerosene lamps.
Fuel burns quickly and is comparatively expensive: in fact burning kerosene for only lighting can consume 10 to 20% of a household's income. This burden traps people in a permanent state of subsistence living, buying cupfuls of fuel for their daily needs, as and when they can.
GravityLight has no batteries, it is completely clean and green. To generate light from gravity, it uses a bag filled with rocks or earth, attached to a belt, which slowly descends (similar to the weight drive in a cuckoo clock) tugging the belt to turn a series of plastic gears that work in unison to spin an electric motor. This motor powers a small yet bright LED that provides continuous illumination for up to 25 minutes. The action only generates a deciwatt or two of power but has a superior light to the majority of kerosene lamps and can be used over and over again with no running costs.
In the final design, control options have been increased and there are now 3 settings, which vary brightness according to ‘drop time’, creating 15, 20 and 25-minute drop rates. The +/- terminals at the front have been removed and replaced with a neat DC socket on the back, onto which different ‘accessories’ can be attached. This provides a much more reliable and simple way of connecting them; for those who prefer the +/- terminal, adaptors are easy to source.
GravityLight prototype production will run at the end of July 2013. London-based product designers Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves expect to have the first batch produced in late summer and they estimate that, when mass-produced, the target cost for this light will be less than $5.
Manufacturer: Deciwatt, UK **
Design: Martin Riddiford & Jim Reeves
More: www.deciwatt.net/
Today, over 1.5 billion people - about 21% of the world's population - have no reliable access to mains electricity and it will continue to grow. These people rely instead on biomass fuels - predominantly kerosene - for light.
The World Bank estimates that, as a result, 780 million women and children inhale smoke, which is equivalent to smoking 2 packets of cigarettes every day. 60% of adult, female lung-cancer victims in developing nations are non-smokers. These fumes kill an estimated 1.5 million women and children in Africa every year and, along with the poor quality of light, also causes eye infections and cataracts. But burning kerosene is also more immediately dangerous: in India alone 1.5 million people suffer severe burns each year, primarily due to overturned kerosene lamps.
Fuel burns quickly and is comparatively expensive: in fact burning kerosene for only lighting can consume 10 to 20% of a household's income. This burden traps people in a permanent state of subsistence living, buying cupfuls of fuel for their daily needs, as and when they can.
GravityLight has no batteries, it is completely clean and green. To generate light from gravity, it uses a bag filled with rocks or earth, attached to a belt, which slowly descends (similar to the weight drive in a cuckoo clock) tugging the belt to turn a series of plastic gears that work in unison to spin an electric motor. This motor powers a small yet bright LED that provides continuous illumination for up to 25 minutes. The action only generates a deciwatt or two of power but has a superior light to the majority of kerosene lamps and can be used over and over again with no running costs.
In the final design, control options have been increased and there are now 3 settings, which vary brightness according to ‘drop time’, creating 15, 20 and 25-minute drop rates. The +/- terminals at the front have been removed and replaced with a neat DC socket on the back, onto which different ‘accessories’ can be attached. This provides a much more reliable and simple way of connecting them; for those who prefer the +/- terminal, adaptors are easy to source.
GravityLight prototype production will run at the end of July 2013. London-based product designers Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves expect to have the first batch produced in late summer and they estimate that, when mass-produced, the target cost for this light will be less than $5.
Manufacturer: Deciwatt, UK **
Design: Martin Riddiford & Jim Reeves
More: www.deciwatt.net/
** Deciwatt is a product development initiative with a mission to explore how to do more with less;
in turn empowering people through sustainable and affordable low power solutions.
...and see what people say:
in turn empowering people through sustainable and affordable low power solutions.
...and see what people say:
"Demonstration of a typical kerosene lamp: which usually consists of an old medicine bottle. Filling it involved lots of spillage. Lighting it with a match produced a yellow flame, giving the light equivalent of a candle, and a lot of smoke."
- www.deciwatt.net
- www.deciwatt.net
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