Introduction
LIGHT UP THE WORLD
A mother and child in Sri Lanka with a solid-state lighting system provided by LUTW, 2002, which provides a brighter, cleaner alternative to kerosene lamps.
Half of the world's population earns perhaps less than $2 a day. Yet many spend up to $200 a year on fuel to keep their homes lit at night with polluting kerosene-based lamps. These people — villagers in remote areas of countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, and inhabitants of shanty towns in South Africa, for example — often have no access to electricity. David Irvine-Halliday, a Scottish-born optical engineer and professor at Calgary University in Canada, has worked tirelessly over the past 10 years to find ways of bringing them a better source of light. It all started with a trip to Nepal in 1997 as part of a working sabbatical.
Stranded in Nepal as a result of flight problems, Irvine-Halliday, or 'Dr Dave' as some call him, decided to spend some time trekking in the Himalayas. When his guide left him alone for a while, he went wandering and came across a school. "The kids were playing outside and I could hear them singing," he recalls. "I popped my head through the window of the school. There weren't any desks or chairs. The first thought that entered my mind was 'My God, it's dark in there, how on earth do they study?' I asked myself if there was anything I could do to help, and the reason I am here today is because of that one thought."
LIGHT UP THE WORLD
Dave Irvine-Halliday, founder of Light Up The World, with two kerosene wick lamps, previously the main source of illumination in the village.
With this seed planted, Irvine-Halliday returned home to Canada to brainstorm how he might bring lighting systems to those children and others in the developing world. He knew he had to come up with something different, something that had not been done before. "Solar panels and wind generators had been around for a long time. Incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescent tubes had also been around for a long time and were very successful. But obviously not successful enough to reach the base of the pyramid [people in impoverished conditions]," he says.
With 20 or so years of experience under his belt as a fibre-optics researcher, Irvine-Halliday knew a lot about LEDs, including the fact that they are virtually indestructible and last for decades. For months he tried to create white light using the output of red, green and blue LEDs, but was 'eminently unsuccessful'. "I managed to make white light, but it was absolutely pathetic," he explains. "You could hardly see the pool of light, let alone read by it."
In 1998 while browsing the Internet, Irvine-Halliday came across news of the invention of the white LED (WLED) by Shuji Nakamura at Nichia, who is now a good friend. He asked Nichia for some sample diodes and set out to test them. "The moment of conception was that moment I poked my head into that school in Nepal," he says. "But our 'Eureka!' moment was, without question, when my technician John Shelley and I, who had been sitting in the dark in my lab for 30 minutes, turned on that WLED. We knew at that instant we could make it work. A child could read by the light of a single diode consuming only about 0.1 W of power."
So what exactly does Light Up The World (LUTW) do? "Right from the start I realized we had to be a renewable-energy-based organization, since all of the villages we visited were nowhere near to an electrical grid." In 1999, Irvine-Halliday and his wife Jenny spent three months in Nepal visiting villagers and showing them the WLED lamps. They asked, in as unbiased a way as possible, for their opinions on issues such as the brightness, colour and usefulness. "The response was so overwhelming that we both knew what we were going to be doing for the rest of our lives," says Irvine-Halliday.
In late 1999, with the entire system designed and tested, the real work began, and by the year 2000, LUTW started permanently lighting up villages in Nepal. The first couple of solid-state lighting systems they installed used WLEDs powered by batteries that were topped up every day after three or four hours of night-time use, using pedal-operated generators. A third village was lit up by a 200-W 'pico-hydro' generator (a very small hydropowered generator). With that 200 W they illuminated 37 houses, each home containing three 1-W lamps. And the fourth village, lit up in autumn of that year, was powered by centralized solar cells, bringing light to 57 homes.
LIGHT UP THE WORLD
Villagers in Nepal, including an old man and his grandson, experience the joy of lighting up their world with solid-state technology.
Since then, LUTW has brought light to homes, churches, clinics and schools in 42 countries, including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Afghanistan. They have installed about 20,000 lighting systems so far, 95% of which are solar-powered. "Initially I was hesitant about using solar energy, because photovoltaic cells appeared to be so expensive and solar panels so fragile," says Irvine-Halliday. "But when I analysed the cost of a lighting system over its whole lifetime (including the energy needed to make it, run it and eventually dispose of it), solar energy is just light years ahead of kerosene — environmentally, economically and socially." Added to that are the health risks associated with kerosene fumes, and the fact that in places like South African shanty towns, where there might be one water tap per 100 households, there is a real danger of kerosene lamps setting not just one house on fire, but sending dozens to hundreds of homes up in flames.
A typical lighting system consists of two 1-W WLED lamps hooked up to a maintenance-free battery about the size of a motorbike battery. The batteries are topped up with energy from 5-W solar panels about 8 inches by 11 inches in size (203 cm 
279 cm). "We use lead-acid batteries as they offer the best value for money by far at the moment," says Irvine-Halliday. "In places like Kathmandu and Delhi, people can make money by recycling these batteries."
LIGHT UP THE WORLD
Let there be light. Simple WLED technology combined with batteries powered by the Sun have illuminated over 100,000 lives in 42 different countries.
This idea of using lighting to bring wealth to impoverished people is a key thrust of the LUTW philosophy. Light Up The World has partnered with micro-credit organizations — 'banks for the poor' — which lend villagers the money to purchase an LED system. A home-based system typically costs about $150–$170 depending on the country. The villager takes out a loan with a rate of interest that is around 15–30%, then pays it back at about the same rate they would pay for kerosene — about $3 per week. "While a 30% interest rate may sound like a lot, you have to remember how much these villagers are spending on fuel year on year," explains Irvine-Halliday. "In the grand scheme of things the interest is not that important. Within 3 to 12 months, most people are able to pay off the whole bill. What's more, they now have a real, tangible asset that they can sell in an emergency, if needs be, for roughly the original purchase price. Instead of money 'going up in smoke', the purchase of the solid-state lighting system, even through the repayment period, is a form of savings." For example, the savings on kerosene expenditure over four years in the shanty town of Tembisa, South Africa, is equivalent to the cost of a brand new fire- and weather-proof home.
In the decade since LUTW was conceived, the organization has touched the lives of over 100,000 people. "As far as the homeowners are concerned, we have not met a single person or family that ever wants to go back to where they were with kerosene or candle power," he comments. "Of course, our systems are not perfect. We want to make the lamps brighter, more rugged and cheaper. There are occasional problems, for example, if people run down the batteries by leaving the lights on all night, or use the batteries to power radios." But these problems impinge on barely a tiny fraction of the success stories.
The foundation is run out of an office at the University of Calgary by four or five people, not including Irvine-Halliday who doesn't get paid for his LUTW efforts and fits his work around his full-time professorship. Most of the organization's projects until now have relied heavily on donations, but with the concept of micro-credit taking off, the hope is that LUTW will not only bring light to the developing world, but will also act as a catalyst for social entrepreneurship that can then create further wealth within these communities. "It has always been the philosophy of LUTW that we do not have to do all the work," says Irvine-Halliday. "We bring the technology to people and show them that solid-state lighting is the way to go for a dozen good reasons. From that point on, there is enormous potential for people to make a decent living selling these lighting systems. We want to help others propagate this idea."
LIGHT UP THE WORLD
A child reading by the light of a WLED lamp in West Bengal, 2001.
The year 2008 will see four areas of focus for LUTW. In Papua New Guinea there are close to 2,000 first-aid posts that don't have any lights at all. These offer the only source of healthcare in the country, and LUTW is committed to lighting up every one of them over the next few years. On 2 May 2008, the organization is holding its largest fundraising event to raise money for this goal. There are also ongoing projects in Ecuador and Peru that need to be completed. With the help of Irvine-Halliday's son, Gregor, LUTW is installing lighting in an orphanage in Tibet. Although some parts of the building have been lit up, another $40,000 is needed to complete the project. One of the goals of 2008 is to find that money this year. If there is any spare time leftover, Irvine-Halliday uses it to try to revitalize lighting initiatives that he began in Kandahar, in Afghanistan.
Dr Dave is convinced that bringing solid-state lighting to the developing world is the right thing to do, and he and his wife Jenny have made it their life's passion. He sees the WLED as "a gift from God" for those two billion people in some of the world's most impoverished conditions, and the only viable way of getting safe, healthy, clean and affordable lighting into the homes of the poorest people on earth.
For more information on LUTW's activities, or to get involved (through donations, partnerships or spreading the word), go to http://www.lutw.org.
Profile by Amber Jenkins.