SoULS Initiative, IIT Bombay wins the 1st Grand Prize in the IEEE's Empower a Billion Lives (EBL) competition. The Finals were held from Sept 28th to Oct 1st in Baltimore, USA. The award includes a citation and a grand prize of $100,000.
The global finalists of the competition represented innovative solutions to electricity access that are holistic, regionally relevant, and have the ability to scale. The Initiative earlier qualified for the Global Finals, after winning the South Asia Regional round held in Dec 2018.
Solar Urja through Localization for Sustainability (SoULS) initiative, a flagship program of IIT Bombay, is based on the ‘Power to All’, including active interventions for providing clean, efficient, affordable and reliable energy access even to the last mile households. SoULS initiative encourages a localized solution involving local communities (localization) and ensures the transition from a ‘program-driven model’ to ‘market-driven model’.
SoULS initiative envisages creating a Solar Ecosystem by Local for Local (SELL) that will serve the local customers by ensuring the provision of local financial mechanism, local institutions and local services, also establishing local manufacturing units for sustainable adoption of technology. SoULS encourages locals to undertake ownership, responsibility and mobilization of technology to create a positive impact in the lives of the rural households.