The results of recent field trials of rechargeable community solar lighting kits for isolated villages now are being analyzed to help researchers in New York City turn their inventions into a sustainable business plan.
“This is changing people’s lives,” says Toby Cumberbatch, a professor at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art’s Center for Sustainable Engineering, Art and Architecture. He started working in 2006 with a team of 26 engineering students to devise an inexpensive community solar lighting system that could be assembled and maintained locally.