By John Keery

WIRELESS Light and Power is a Central Okanagan-based ministry striving to bring electric lights to people in remote areas in Africa.

There is more than enough technology to provide solar-powered lights where conventional power is not available, said Kelowna engineer and businessman Ludwig Teichgraber.

The problem is that only missionaries and other expatriates, and a few better-off local villagers, can afford them, the Wireless founder and director added.

On a visit to Cameroon six years ago, to help a missionary friend with construction work, locals began asking him if he could help them get lights like the missionaries.

“People came and asked if I could help solve their problem,” Teichgraber said. “I asked myself if there would be a way of sharing solar power with the village, at a cost they could afford.”

Most people in the village of Allat in remote Central Cameroon, where Wireless Light has its pilot project, use kerosene lanterns and conventional flashlights with disposable batteries. Both are expensive for people with little or no cash income; they’re also ineffective, and bad for the environment.

Kerosene lanterns use scarce, expensive fossil fuel, and are a fire hazard. Many areas are already littered with discarded flashlight batteries.

Wireless is beginning to offer Allat villagers – most of whom live in huts made of mud and straw – super-efficient LED lights, powered by the latest in rechargeable flashlight batteries (which last about a week).

When they need charging, they are taken to a central station in the village powered by solar cells, and exchanged for a fresh units.

Continue article >>

This is no conventional foreign aid program, however. Teichgraber hopes to guide its development, so it can become a self-supporting, indigenous business model which can be adopted by other villages in Cameroon, and eventually other countries in Africa.  

People pay to have their lights charged. The goal is to have them spend the money they now use for kerosene and flashlight batteries on the new, better alternative.

The lights are being assembled in Cameroon from imported components, and local people are being trained to maintain and  run the charging stations and manage the business and financial aspects of the operation.

Eventually they will be able to run and expand the business on their own, Teichgraber hopes.

Conventional aid pro-grams would simply provide them with ready-made products which would work until they broke down or wore out – but not change anything in the long run, he said.

So far, Teichgraber is relying on a small group of supporters and his own resources to finance and run the project.

However, he believes the  new public awareness of the problem of carbon emissions provides a golden opportunity to generate additional support and raise funds.

If you want to keep driving your SUV, you can help the environment by buying a carbon offset from Wireless Light  – allowing it to set up more charging stations and provide more lights, he said.  

“It is a true carbon offset. If you burn a litre of fuel, you can buy a carbon offset for a litre of kerosene somewhere else.”

Contact: 250-769-6274

June 2008