Solar-Powered Computers for Off-Grid Schools

      In 2009, a 19-year-old graduating senior from Hong Kong's International School, Charles Watson, carrying a rudimentary computer, had took off a year from entering a university to travel to Nepal to work on a project he came up with while still in school: to provide off-the-grid schools with solar-linked computing power. "Once I got to Nepal, I was running a blog, taking photos and so on, saying 'We need computers,'" he says. "I did a fundraising run in Nepal and that raised enough to buy 30 computers at $300 each - $10,000 if you include the solar panels."
      Watson, an American who has be raised in Hong Kong, is currently 23 and still is not attending a university, despite being accepted at the University of Illinois, and doesn't plan on attending any time in the foreseeable future. Instead, he is the founder and chief of SolarLEAP, a nonprofit organization company whose computers are often assembled by his parents at their kitchen table, but they are delivering computing power to schools without reliable electricity, or none at all, in countries as diverse as Nepal, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and, he hopes, across the world.
       "As many as 1.3 billion people, a fifth of the world's population, remain without access to electricity," he says. Ten countries--four in developing Asia and six in sub-Saharan Africa--account for two-thirds of those without electricity. Unless further action is taken, it is projected that close to one billion people will be without electricity still in 2030.

Charles Watson and friends

        Watson has since branched out to Ghana, where he has installed 24 computers, each running on solar power in off-grid schools. After the projects in Nepal and Ghana were completed, demand in rural communities began to grow. Within weeks, organizations in India and Ethiopia were looking for unique low-power consumption computers to run in schools without electricity. Furthermore, Watson was looking for a way to continue the work without his direct, on-the-ground involvement, and thus SolarLEAP was born.
        Today, he has installed 200 of solar-powered computers in five countries with funding from non-governmental organizations and anybody he can solicit money from. "The transformation of schools is dramatic," he says. In 2010, after installation of his computers in Canumay School near Antipolo in the Philippines, the school moved from last place to a first ranking in its school district. He provided the first solar-powered computers to any school in India. "One in four people around the globe don't have access to electricity," he said. "More than 100 million children don't have access to education and a large share of students fortunate enough to be in school don't have access to quality education materials."

Solar Technology around the World

     It has been reported recently that China has been the most highest demand towards renewable energy investors. Costs of solar technology had been falling drastically over the years and is expected to ease China's power shortage by 2015. Solar supplies are expected to be leveled to the same price as electricity fees that is passed on right now. Soon, there will be the era of Solar Panels around every residential and  commercial rooftops in a large scale in a short period of time as well as the supply of coal and oil dropping slowly but surely in our economic crisis with Obama's viewpoint towards the production of oil and gas.


     South Korea had also been following the crowd towards solar energy and the government had been, without a doubt,  the greenest government in the world. Largest industries and companies such as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai are making massive investments towards wind, solar, tidal, and nuclear energy onto vehicles, power supplies and home appliances.

Nepal is also not far behind in introducing solar technology.
Did you know you can conduct energy through human hair?
     In a recent discovery in Nepal, Malin Karki, a Nepalese teen who attends school in Kathmandu, invented  a solar panel that conducts static energy through strands of human hair called melanin. These pigments of hair are connected to each pin designed in a square panel that can produce up to 18 watts of power that costed him as low as $38 as a whole. Inspired by a book written by Stephen Hawking, he may have started an amazing revolutionary idea around the world.