An estimated 1.3 billion people around the world lack any access to electricity, but now researchers from MIT have developed a system that enables rural villagers who can afford solar panels to sell some of the output, providing both income for the owners and much-needed power for their neighbors.
The system, developed over two years of research and numerous trips to India, has at its heart a simple device that is smaller than a shoebox: a power management unit. This performs a variety of tasks, regulating how electricity from solar panels gets directed to immediate uses—such as powering lights and cell phones—or to batteries for later use. At the same time, it monitors how much power goes to each user, providing a record for billing without a need for individual meters.
MIT doctoral students Wardah Inam, SM ’13, and Daniel Strawser, SM ’12, supported by the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, spent much of this summer doing field tests of the system in a village in the Jamshedpur area in northeastern India. A few of the village’s houses already had small, simple solar power systems being used to run a few low-power LED lights and charge cell phones. After evaluation of test results, participants were slated to get permanent solar installations that would provide them an opportunity to earn revenue by selling excess power to neighbors without electricity.
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