The IEEE Global Energy Access Workshop and Empower a Billion Lives Global Final Awards was held on Tuesday, 21 March 2023 at Orange County Convention Center Co-Located with the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC), Orlando Florida.
The Energy Access Workshop and Empower a Billion Lives Global Awards was live-streamed on IEEE-TV and will soon be available for viewing on IEEE.tv.
THE WINNERS!!!!
Global Grand Prize Winner – Nanoe – Madagascar
Automation Centric Track Winner – Green Empowerment – Malaysia and the Phillippines
Centralized Model Track Winner – Standard Microgrid – Zambia
Decentralized Model Track Winner – SolarWorx – Cameroon
End-Use Energy Track Winner – D-Olivette – Nigeria
Enabling Technology Track Winner – Atutu – Myanmar – Notable for IMPACT
Student Team First Prize (Shared) – PSUT Engineering 2 and R2P Cube – Jordan
Student Team Third Prize – IITK Smart Grid – India
Honorable Mentions: Living Energy Farm – Puerto Rico; Solar Freeze – Kenya; Scalable Solar Ice Maker – Kenya
Coming Soon – The Winning Team page will be updated with videos and more information about their solutions.
Introducing IEEE Empower a Billion Lives
IEEE Empower a Billion Lives is a global competition aimed at fostering innovation to develop solutions to electricity access. Solutions are expected to be scalable, regionally relevant, holistic, and leverage 21st-century technologies with exponentially declining prices.
Stay up to date
Sign up for our newsletter to receive competition news and updates.
Brought to you by:
Sponsors and Partners
Platinum Sponsor
Gold Sponsor
Silver Sponsors
Partners
Energy access is a global challenge
There are 3 billion people in the world living in energy poverty, and over 1 billion people without any access to electricity. So far, only 1.8 million people have gained tier 2 energy access by using off-grid electric services. To address energy poverty, more of the same may not be the answer. New strategies are needed to scale energy access solutions 1000x.
Energy access means opportunity
Access to electricity is critical to health care delivery and to the overarching goal of universal health coverage. The WHO defines access to essential medicines and technologies as one of the key factors in ensuring universal health coverage. Most of these essential technologies require electricity, and without electricity, many health care interventions simply cannot be provided. Despite this, a study found that only 26% of health facilities in the Sub-Saharan Africa has access to reliable electricity.
Water is the most essential element of life; it is required for basic sustenance, health, and irrigation. Nearly one billion people do not have access to clean, safe water. The United Nations estimates that Sub-Saharan Africa alone loses 40 billion hours per year collecting water; that’s the same as a whole year’s worth of labor by France’s entire workforce! Electrical pumps are the most effective method to alleviate this crisis and provide clean and safe water for all.
Education is widely recognized as one of the most essential components for poverty reduction. According to UNDESA, about 90% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa go to primary schools that lack electricity, while 27% of village schools in India lack electricity access, thus not being able to operate electric lights, refrigerators, fans, computers, and printers. Electrified schools outperform non-electrified schools on key educational indicators, have better staff retention, and can in some cases enable broader social and economic development of communities.
For more than a billion people worldwide, kerosene lamps are the primary lighting source, which is expensive, unsafe and carcinogenic. The World Bank estimates that breathing kerosene fumes is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, and 66% of adult females with lung cancer in developing nations are nonsmokers.
Electricity is a key component of economic empowerment. Electricity can increase household per capita income by 39 percent. Businesses operate at higher levels of productivity, farmers can run cleaner irrigation systems and processing machines that improve their yields and thus, their income.
Join the competition
The Platform for beginning the Full Proposal Submission is now open – the field to upload the Full Proposal Document will go live on 24 June 2022. It is essential that teams either attend the webinar or view the recording prior to uploading their Full Proposal.
Stay up to date
Sign up for our newsletter to receive competition news and updates.