The Village Lighting Project

Uniqueness of the Project:

• Village wide implementation
• High quality state of the art LED lanterns
• High quality NiMH batteries which are rechargeable hundreds of times
• Sustainability designed into project by using renewable resources and charging villagers an amount that will insure sufficient finds for replacement batteries and solar panels or maintenance when needed
• Lighting project integrated with other village improvements after meeting and discussing village needs with the villagers
• Professionally documented. Accessibility to the village in one day promotes follow-up documentation.
• Planned as a woman’s based cooperative project
• Centralized cooperative charging in the village
• High “bang for the buck” results
• Separate solar units forces every owner to get their lantern in unobstructed sunlight every day without any backup power on cloudy or rainy days. This system avoids those problems.
• There is a cost savings and increased reliability by having a centralized larger solar panel with a deep discharge battery providing several days of backup.
• The necessity for community cooperation provides the opportunity for better community relations and the ability to apply revenue from the project to other community determined and designed development projects.
• The village centrally located solar panel unobstructed (unshaded) by design and its location optimized for solar orientation.
• The cooperative model of a single solar unit also has potentially lower maintenance with less functioning parts in each lighting unit