GravityLight

Lighting for the developing countries

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A realistic alternative to Kerosene lamps.

There are currently over 1.5 billion people in the World who have no reliable access to mains electricity. These people rely, instead, on biomass fuels (mostly kerosene) for lighting once the sun goes down. We propose a sustainable lighting solution powered by gravity.

GravityLight, an off-line project which is now at a working prototype stage.

GravityLight is a revolutionary new approach to storing energy and creating illumination. It takes only 3 seconds to lift the weight which powers GravityLight, creating 30 minutes of light on its descent. For free.

Credentials

We are Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves, London based designers who have spent 4 years developing GravityLight as an off-line project. 

We work for therefore.com, which has over 20 years of experience in designing and developing hand held computing and communication products for a host of pioneers including Psion, Toshiba, NEC, TomTom, Inmarsat, ICO, Sepura, Racal Acoustics, Voller Energy, FreePlay and SolarAid.

No batteries to drain or replace.

We’re using a tried and tested manufacturer who has the right expertise to make GravityLight. We have some links to partner organisations in Africa and need to do the same for India. If you're part of an organisation and would like to get involved then please contact us. We are particularly looking for contacts in South America.

When it comes to the world of energy, there is no such thing as a free lunch. But it’s encouraging to see that the price for energy enough to light a small area has been reduced down to simply lifting a bag.

With GravityLight, however, it only takes a few seconds to lift the weight, which creates enough energy for half an an hour of light, whenever it is needed. It has no batteries to run out, replace or dispose of. It is completely clean and green.

GravityLight converts gravitational energy into light, just like its name promises. That’s right, you lift a bag filled with 20 pounds of stuff (sand, earth, whatever) and attach it to a cord. As gravity pulls the bag down, an LED light is illuminated, working kind of like those hand-cranked flashlights. A braking mechanism causes the weight to drop slowly, producing about 30 minutes of light, and returning the bag to its original height “restarts” the light.

Hang it in the shed or make it into a great porch light, you can clip on a hanging basket or anything weighing about 20lbs.

Following the initial inspiration of using gravity, and years of perspiration, we have refined the design and it is now ready for production. 

We need your help to fund the tooling, manufacture and distribution of at least 1000 gravity powered lights. We will gift them to villagers in both Africa and India to use regularly. 

The follow-up research will tell us how well the lights met their needs, and enable us to refine the design for a more efficient MK2 version. 

Once we have proved the design, we will be looking to link with NGOs and partners to distribute it as widely as possible. When mass produced the target cost for this light is less than $5.

LED bulbs do not attract mosquitos like conventional bulbs.

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