A team of Michiganders is manufacturing and selling a solar powered lantern. It can also function as a flashlight. It costs $50 and lasts 10 years. Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus has their story.
They’re green and clear plastic, about 8 inches long. They come with a thin solar panel, about 6 inches long. Herman Moffett is packing them in boxes. They’re called K-lights.
“This lantern is changing lives. That’s a good thing. This lantern is changing my life as well. It’s allowed me to be employed. It works out nice on both ends.”
The two ends are the basement of an old furniture warehouse in Grand Rapids where Moffett is working. And the other is East Africa. The K-Light lantern is made and sold there as well as here. Just 1 out of 4 homes in Sub-Saharan Africa has electricity. People walk miles to chop down fragile forests so they can cook and heat and light their homes.
“I couldn’t imagine that. I’ve lived here in the USA all my life. I’ve had electricity. So I couldn’t imagine life without it.”
And yet deprivation isn’t foreign to Moffett. He spent a decade in prison. The Methodist church found him the job with K-Light. Missionary work at home and abroad is a Grand Rapids tradition. This is the buckle on Michigan’s Bible belt. 77 year old Dr. Dale Williams is one example. He and two other retired doctors have spent $2 million to bring light to the dark continent.
“We love it. Beats playing shuffleboard. Having a good time. We don’t really intend to get rich. But we do want to break even. You haven’t broke even yet? No. Not even close. We’re doing pretty well in Rwanda.”
The K-light sells for $49. If you charge it in full sun for 10 hours it will give you 20 hours of light.
“I was chairman and a big shareholder in a small medical device company called Instrumet. We developed a pump and turnicets and sold the company to Stryker. We put half the money into the foundation, called it God’s money and that’s what we’re using. So he better help out or he’s gonna lose all his money.”
Williams was in Ethiopia in 1984 when the brutal communist government prevented food trucks from reaching starving people. That’s why British pop stars recorded the song ‘Do They Know it’s Christmas?’ He was in China’s Tiananmen Square right after the bloody government crackdown on students. He and his son went to Rwanda a year after the civil war that killed a million people. But hey, let’s tackle something easier than politics, says Williams. Let’s replace the old time kerosene lamps with solar powered ones.
“If you have a kerosene light going in those small houses it’s like smoking 2 packs a day. They also cause fire and they’re expensive. And once they get this light they don’t have to buy power or any fuel for 10-12 years. They’ll last that long.”
At his rural home in Shiawassee County, South of Owosso, K-Light engineer Bill Greenhoe explains how he came up with the idea.
“Dr. Williams had built a bunch of schools with the Koinonia Foundation and he wanted to go over and install solar on them and then run computers. So I designed the systems and the installation manuals. We shipped them off in a container to Rwanda.”
Then Greenhoe decided to redesign the lantern he had done a couple years before. That one was bigger and more expensive. They sold only 40,000 units. This model is up to 70,000 and even selling here in the U.S. Greenhoe says large scale solar isn’t yet popular here because…
“We do not add in the additional costs of the health concerns, the environmental concerns of the coal burning plants into the cost of the electricity. If we did that our electric costs would be much higher.”
Exxon Mobil is reporting that in the next 20 years world demand for energy will go up by 35%. Even people in Michigan might need solar lights to charge their cell phones or just to see at night. It will help the local economy if they’re buying solar lights made in Michigan.
Sometime I would enjoy sharing similar experiences. Currin Corporation (Midland) worked with small firm in Guatemala 15 years ago to make small solar lamp for non-electrified homes in Central America. Aimed for cost of $30/each, but in small quantities, cost came to $55, which for marketing in remote regions, required selling price of $90. Few sales resulted. Learned several lessons.
I assume you are using LED lamps.
Do you have distribution in Uganda? Going there (Kabale) at end of February as part of ecunebical program.
Ced
Ced,
will be giving you a call next week.
Dale Williams