Laotian for-profit Social Entrepreneur wins Ashden Award

I met Andy Schroeter, founder and CEO of the Laotian venture Sunlabob, at the TBLI conference in Bangkok, and I am happy that his determination and persistence increasingly pays off - now he has been awarded the reputable Ashden Award. Congratulations!

The Ashden Award is a UK-based foundation that awards outstanding solutions for sustainable energy. This year five first prizes were awarded. Among many entries Sunlabob received the first prize for Light and Power, sponsored by Climate Care in the UK.

Sunlabob had submitted the Solar Lamp solution. Thereby lamps with accumulators and charging electronics are distributed to households who each have to pay a deposit for the lamp. The deposit is refunded when they bring back the lamp. The lamps burn for 15 hours after which they switch off. The households then go to a central recharging station that is operated by a
village technician as a small enterprise. There they can exchange the spent lamp for a recharged one and only pay a recharging fee, ie. the deposit transfers to the recharged lamp which they take home. The recharging fees from all the lamps pay for the whole backup system: This is the state-of-the-art large solar array in the village that acts as the recharging station and which is rented by the village technician from Sunlabob. The rent covers all costs including amortizations, servicing, replacements and profit of Sunlabob. Our test-runs and calculations show that the recharging fees the households pay for regular lighting at home is comparable or even cheaper than what they spend for kerosene in the lamps they presently use. We are very proud to be able to achieve this without any direct subsidies, and we are proud that this solution has been developed in the field in Laos and is now internationally recognized as a breakthrough
for photovoltaics in remote rural areas anywhere on the planet.

Herb Wade, an independent renewable energy consultant with 30 years experience is quoted by Ashden Awards as having commented: "I personally have been directly involved in rural electrification through solar photovoltaics in more than 25 countries. The Sunlabob project is easily the one that stands out as the best at integrating PV based rural electrification, rural business development and lifestyle improvement for rural dwellers and, most remarkably, has done so with no support from the government and with the apparently achievable goal of full cost recovery."

An important criterion for the Ashden Awards was the potential for a large impact. Although our operations in Sunlabob require the development of a local skill base and the establishment of small enterprises to run the franchises, it was estimated by the jury that these obstacles can be surmounted. Now, after the pulbicity of the award, we are already being approached by companies and organizations from SE-Asia, East Africa, and South America for exploring how to get similar efforts to operate in their regions. We are of course looking forward to cooperate wherever we can.

A very interesting new aspect emerged because our solution directly replaces kerosene with electricity in a way that is easily calculated. For this reason we have now been approached by Carbon Trading organizations. It is also a reason why Climate Care sponsored the prize for our solution. This is a very interesting development and we intend to explore its potential to the
full. Again, we are proud that something developed in the Lao field conditions now has a chance to make a worldwide impact in a truly crucial area.

We will use the prize money of the Ashden Award to purchase further charging stations and solar lamps for villages in Laos. The demand is very high for them.