Note: The project is still active under the name IEEE Empower A Billion Lives.
For further details, please visit our website: http://www.empowerabillionlives.org
IEEE Light Up A Billion Smiles, launched by the IEEE Power Electronics Society, the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Georgia Tech’s Center for Distributed Energy and Delft University of Technology, aimed to fundamentally rethink how energy poverty could be eliminated globally over the next decade, from the bottom-up and in a sustainable manner. The program aims to harness the creativity, talent and passion of the global community, through a global competition slated for 2018 that can help align global efforts and metrics to achieve a common purpose.
The workshop was held in the Marcus Nanotechnology building at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA, USA, on Thursday, November 10, 2016. The event started at 10 am with the welcome and opening remarks from professors Deepak Divan (GT) and Braham Ferreira (TU Delft). The guest speakers were Malcolm Cosgrove-Davies from World Bank, Matt Jordan from CLASP, and Prabhjot Kaur from IIT Madras in India. Christine Martin from USAD was not physically present due to an emergency but teleconferenced in her presentation. The workshop had three breakout sessions. The attendees were divided into three groups, each with a moderator, a scribe and two graduate students and were given the questions to address and provide their inputs. The moderators of each group presented the discussion results in the conclusion session, and the event was ended with a discussion of future steps. A networking reception and optional dinner followed. The invitees included the representatives from India, Denmark, the Netherlands, and US. The following is a list of attendees from the academia and companies who attended the workshop:
IIT Madras
University of Illinois at Chicago
Aalborg University
TU Delft
Georgia Institute of Technology
EPRI
IEEE
USAID
CLASP
World Bank
GOGLA
SELF
IEEE Smart Village
Google
Equifax
Light-the-World
GE
Massive Tech
Birmingham Technologies
Tyger Ventures
Tech Mahindra
Clean Tech Open
FlashPoint
PV Pure