Solar Day Pilipinas -- A Yearly Event From Now On

      During this extreme heatwave coming this summer in the Philippines, there lies potential for solar power to grow as our reliance on fossil fuels can be reduced or dimmed. The Philippine Solar Power Alliance (PSPA) and the World Wide Fund for Nature Philippines (WWF) has, in fact, celebrated their very first Solar Day Pilipinas 2013 on April 26. PSPA President Dante Briones had described solar power as being a cutting-edge technology and a tool for improving national competitiveness, especially in the Philippines. "The country is actually one of the leading countries in Asia when it comes to solar energy," Briones said.
      Solar power is also estimated to produce 20-30% less emissions of harmful gases than coal power. "Why do we have to thoroughly dig the soil just to look for coal when all we need is to raise our heads to see the sun?" said Claire Marie Yvonne Lee, PSPA Vice President. According to Lee, she observed that many businesses and institutions have already begun to start using solar panels. Some of these, she points out, are Starbucks, the Asian Development Bank, the Makati Medical Center and the Department of Trade and Industry.
       Solar power, however, proves to be quite costly. As a matter of fact, the cost of acquiring one solar panel may exceed the initial savings generated from not connecting to the country's power grid. Though this may be so, PSPA and WWF believe that as costs decrease, solar panels will be economically efficient over time. In addition, solar technology usually is covered by a 25-year warranty. "A solar system is a good investment," said Lee. "Unlike a car or a cellphone, it's not a dead investment," she added.
       At Solar Day Pilipinas 2013, there were products of various solar power developers showcased for the public to view. The products consisted of a range of solar phone chargers to large-scale solar systems for residential areas and commercial establishments. Ten solar power developers present were included as follows: Renewables Made in Germany, MERALCO, Tritec, Transnational Uyeno Solar Corporation, GNB Exite, Maschinen and Technik Inc., Cagayan Electric Power, Sasonbisolar Inc., One Renewable Energy Enterprise Inc., Solutions Using Renewable Energy Inc., CEnAG, SunPower Inc., and Propmech. "Solar Day Pilipinas will be a yearly event from now on," said PSPA Founder and Chair Teresa Cruz-Capellan.

Startup's Goal: To Advance Solar Energy in Developing Countries

    At age 19, Eden Full had left Princeton University to develop her invention, the SunSaluter. The $25 solar-panel rotator, which she claims can increase a solar panel's efficiency by up to 40%, is designed to benefit those in developing countries because it is easy to assemble and doesn't require electricity. To start up such an invention, she has spent the last two years attending a schedule of client meetings, research and design, and field testing underwritten by the Ashoka Foundation, the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, and the Thiel Fellowship, which provides no-strings-attached grants of $100,000 to promising young startups.
     While her company, Roseicollis Technologies Inc., generates enough revenue to cover costs, it's expanding in terms of size and reach. She has one full-time employee and three part-time designers and project developers, and is working on partnerships with organizations in South Africa, Indonesia, Kenya, and the Philippines. In 2011, she also has been featured on Forbes' list of 30 promising energy innovators under 30.
      This month, Full had made an appearance on a panel at the Clinton Global Initiative University, an annual event that gathers enterprising college students and big names such as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and the Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert, to discuss the future of electricity. She is currently aged 21 and living in Berkeley, California, where she plans to return to Princeton University in the Fall while managing her team in between classes via Skype.

Eden Full

      Recently, Full has also been chosen for an interview by Entrepreneur to clarify reasons of how she was able to think of such a brilliant idea as well as having experiences being a young student to suddenly being an entrepreneur. She had discussed that her "first experiment was a desktop solar car I built at age 10, and I kept experimenting from there. I brought the idea of the SunSaluter to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair my junior year in high school, and the girl next to me was from Indonesia. She said 'This is a cool idea. You should deploy it in my country because everywhere outside of Jakarta lacks electricity.' I was so open-minded at the time. It was the first suggestion that came along and it happened to be a good one."
      When asked to also comment on how life has been after Princeton and the benefits and drawbacks of stepping outside the traditional education barrier, she replied, "I felt a lot of freedom to finally be out in the real world and do what I wanted. I moved to the Bay Area. I could say, 'Hi, I don't have a college degree but I'm working on this.' People don't even bat an eye. Thanks to Ashoka Foundation, I had the funding to travel the globe and see what communities in the developing world are like, so I can design something that's relevant to them. We also won an award from the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge that we've directed toward product development and team building."
       Finally, as the interview draws to a close, she comments advice as well to other future entrepreneurs of all ages who are thinking of stepping outside the traditional path: "It can be scary to question one's life trajectory and make a decision to change it. But one of the best things I ever did was learn not to live the default." Therefore, any other future entrepreneurs out there, who also believe they can make it far, don't be afraid to step out. If you think you're able to succeed, then show others you can.

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."