Inventors' Pack
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Inventors’ Pack Our Mission Our mission is to eliminate 1 in 7 people do not have access to There are many good reasons to Polluting kerosene lamps and their electricity; in sub-Saharan Africa it is as eliminate kerosene lamps: Collectively, kerosene lamps cause 3% damaging effects. high as 2 in 3. of the world’s CO2 emissions. They are a Dangerous significant source of black carbon, with Without electricity, the majority of families Their fumes cause coughing, eye irritation even more intense local warming impact. use kerosene lamps to light their homes. and respiratory diseases. Unprotected flames and over-turned lamps can cause An ongoing expense A typical kerosene lamp is made from an severe burns. The cost of kerosene is a poverty trap. empty bottle or tin can with a wick in the Amongst the poorest households, it middle, filled with fuel and lit. Unsupervised containers of kerosene can consumes up to 20% of their income. The lead to unintentional ingestion, currently amount of light families can have - for the leading cause of child poisoning in the reading, cooking and socialising - each developing world. evening is limited by what they can afford. Our Approach Using good design to tackle poverty Sustainable and scalable Creating livelihoods, locally Collaborative We are committed to creating solutions If we gave away GravityLights to the over As well as enabling people to save money Building trusted local partnerships will be informed and guided by the needs and 1.1 billion people that don’t have access to by switching from kerosene lamps to a integral to our work. From manufacturing feedback of low income households electricity, we would need to raise a lot of GravityLight, our plan is to partner with to assembly, distribution and impact living in energy poverty. It’s not enough money! Give-aways also risk undermining local organisations to create jobs and help measurement, we will be working with a to create affordable solutions, to have a local livelihoods of those selling lighting people earn an income through distributing number of organisations, benefiting from scalable impact these need to be reliable, solutions. GravityLights. their experience and reach to maximize robust and attractive too. This is why focus Instead, by creating a product that our impact. groups, trials and pilots are central to both people value and are willing to pay for, our product development and route to GravityLight will be able to reach far market planning. more people, more quickly, without it’s fate being solely reliant on continuous fundraising. Our Solution GravityLight has been designed Money saving: with no running costs it as a safe, clean and affordable pays for itself within 4 months of switching alternative to kerosene lamps. from kerosene lamps. Powered by the lift of a weight, Safe and clean: with no fumes nor fire. GravityLight offers instant, limitless light, whatever the Instant: no charging needed weather outside. No sun needed: a year-round solution. GravityLight has multiple benefits, including: Limitless: GravityLight can be used over and over again, not limited by battery capacity or lifespan. How GravityLight Works GravityLight transforms the pull of GravityLight is installed at around 6ft/ This sprocket drives a gear train at After 20 minutes, the weight will slowly gravity into electricity. 1.8m from the ground. The bag is filled increasingly higher speed and lower torque reach the ground and the gears and with 12kg of weight – such as rocks or (force), driving a DC generator – a motor run motor will stop turning. If this happens, The potential energy of a raised weight is sand. backwards - at thousands of rotations per the light will turn off. For more light, turned into kinetic energy as the weight minute. simply lift the weight again, or for descends and turns a gear traIn. The orange cord is pulled to lift the weight continuous light, raise the weight back up and, as the weight gradually descends In this way, GravityLight generates just before it touches the ground. The gears power a generator, turning (about 1mm per second), it turns a drive under a deciwatt (0.1 watt) of electricity, mechanical energy into electricity that sprocket at high torque (force) and low which we use to power LEDs to create light. Watch a video of GravityLight’ geartrain in powers an LED (light emitting diode). speed. action and explaination of how it works in Destin Sandin’s Smarter Everyday episode. How GravityLight Works: FAQs Why hasn’t a GravityLight been How do the gears withstand the The further through the drive train you What stops the bag from falling made before? 12kg weight? go, the fewer teeth are needed to engage fast to the floor? Using the force of gravity and kinetic energy The side of the GravityLight closest to because the torque gets lighter and The LEDs. The fastest gear is running at to create electricity is not a new idea. the weight (where forces are larger) uses lighter as the speed runs faster – with the a high speed but such low torque (force) What is new – and continually improving – is internal gearing. This means one gear generator running at 1600 rotations per that even a small bit of resistance can the efficiency of LED technology in turning running in the inner diameter of another minute. reduce the speed of the gear. electricity into light. The 0.1 watt produced gear, to ensure multiple teeth of the gear by GravityLight equals 16 lumens of light – are engaged at a time. Once the generator turns up to a certain over 5 times brighter than a kerosene lamp. speed and the voltage limit of the LED is LEDs are currently at about 30% efficiency. This is important for transmitting the reached, the LED will not let it turn any As they continue to improve, the amount force of the weight over multiple teeth faster. This means the weight falls at a of light produced by GravityLight will also thus decreasing the contact stress and slow, constant speed. increase. increasing the life of the gear. Evolution of GravityLight: Concept Testing Product designers, Martin They set out exploring solutions that could With the incredible, worldwide support The objectives of the trial were to: Riddiford and Jim Reeves, first avoid the high costs and limited life span of our first crowdfunding campaign, heard about the challenge of of batteries and that use an energy source this concept was developed further. We - prove the concept: Would people use a kerosene lamps and scale of the as ubiquitous and accessible as weight manufactured the first small batch of GravityLight instead of a kerosene lamp? issues through UK charity, Solar and gravity. GravityLights to be tested in a range of Aid, in 2009. different environments. - test demand: Would people buy one? To prove the principle, Martin and Jim developed several prototypes, from a - gather feedback: What did people like bicycle wheel and dumbbells, to creating about GravityLight and what needed Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) gears improving? connected to a motor and LEDs. GL01 GL02 Our production prototype, GL01, Accessibility: Some people struggled to lift Our revised design, GL02, Brighter: GL02 is 50% more efficient than was a critical milestone in the the 12kg weight from the ground up to the incorporates this feedback and GL01 through material selection and re- development of GravityLight. It full height. two further years of development design of the gear train. This additional enabled us to test our technology to optimise its efficiency, reliability power has been used to make GL02 on a large scale and determine the Product failure and misuse: Several and lifespan. brighter at a longer duration than GL01. viability of the concept. children used GravityLight as a swing, Longer lifespan: Extensive accelerated overloading and breaking the gears. Improvements with GL02 include: life testing has helped us identify and The power setting, choosing between 90% of GL01 trialists reported that they address causes of product failures. The brightness and duration, was rarely used would use GravityLight instead of a More accessible: Introduction of a pulley geartrain is 9 times stronger, GL02 comes kerosene lamp. What was even more useful but also occasionally caused failures. system to lift the weight, it feels like lifting a with a 1 year warranty and our test rigs was finding out why some people would not: 2kg weight rather than 12kg. in the UK have lasted over 3 years of Lifespan: This was as short as 3 months continuous use. for some units vs a 1 year minimum target. SatLights Each GravityLight comes with 2 A SatLight consist of two plastic mouldings, SatLights, ancillary lights that are a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and a surface powered by GravityLight. SatLights mount LED. The PCB (a development since transform GravityLight from a GL01 SatLights) enables the use of stereo single, ambient light into multi- cables and the ability to switch each light on user, home lighting. and off as needed. By twisting the upper and lower plastic The first SatLight plugs into the GravityLight, mouldings, users can change the light settings with subsequent lights in the chain plugging and decide when and where they want light. into each other. With a 5 metre stereo cable, This feature also adjusts the brightness of the these lights can be hung around a room, for light;users can choose a single, bright task light both ambient and task lighting. to work by or three lights that share the 0.1W power between them. Value Added Engineering Designing a solution that is as Our aim is for GravityLight to scale affordable as possible, for families through market forces, which means that living on the equivalent of just a GravityLight needs to be an aspirational few US Dollars per day, can risk product with elegant design for people to focusing solely on cost.