Stuart Hart States Technology Must Be Optimized Based on Real Needs - Not Top of Pyramid Needs

Ali Goheer - 5 November, 2007 Format for printing

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So first lesson, you have to optimize the technology for what the early needs are, you know what the real needs are and not necessarily just the top of the pyramid needs. So a lot of it is technology optimization and then it's systems thinking that if you want light at night then it makes sense to leap to the most advanced lighting systems, not to go back to incandescent bulbs which are you know, energy inefficient and contribute to climate change problems and greenhouse gas emissions. So you'd want to go certainly compact for essence but better yet, you'd want to go directly to LED, right, light emitting diode technology, which is the frontier lighting technology, highest tech right. It's in very few lighting applications in the developed world today because it's disruptive. It's in traffic signals, your brake lights are LEDs, they're super efficient, 95% more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, super durable right, throw them down on to a concrete slab, they don't break and last 10 years. That's why they make sense in traffic signals and now you notice your brake lights don't burn out anymore because they're LEDs. So you don't have to worry about getting stopped by the cops for your burned out brake light. So you know in these niche applications they've come in but not in mainstream lighting applications because you'd have to change all the lighting fixtures. It's disruptive to the current lighting infrastructure, not true at the base of the pyramid right, where you don't have any preexisting lighting infrastructure to unlearn or to retire. So if you marry LED and small scale solar 1 or 2 watt panels because they're so energy efficient that's all you need to generate, right. So you can take 2-3 LED arrays, a little 1 or 2 watts solar panel, some switches, a little wiring and a little battery and the battery is actually the biggest block and that will change soon.