GravityLight: lighting for developing countries (no batery, no fuel, just gravity)

[morningfog]

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.

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.
Why GravityLight?

Did you know that 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.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/282006

This link is to a non-profit site that is trying raise money. The idea is incredible and I thought too interesting not to share. If there is a rule against linking to a site whose primary goal is raising money, I will delete or move to comply.

[niyad]

1. sounds interesting

[silverweb]

2. Awesome!

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Makes me wonder why no one thought of/developed this idea sooner.

[Speck Tater]

3. My mother has a hundred year old clock that works with weights. :)

As LED lights become more efficient it becomes more possible to provide light with a very minimal amount of current being generated. I imagine you could also have a wind-up light where a wound-up spring powers a small generator to feeds a bright LED.

On Edit: I have some lights I take with me when I go camping that charge up in the sunlight during the day and provide me with enough light to read by after the sun goes down.

[mindwalker_i]

4. That going to put those poor electric utility companies out of business

You know, the job creators. No Republicans will have to add gravity to the laws they need to repeal.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. I've been wondering for a long time if wind turbines couldn't store energy this way.

Those enormously tall towers have me thinking of massive chain weights inside, raised and lowered by a cuckoo-clock escapement mechanism. Since the raw power is in the form of rotation of the turbine blades, this seems potentially more efficient than storing electricity. Of course you would have to reinforce the lower parts of the towers, and raise the weights only partway up (don't want top-heavy towers tipping over !), but it could provide substantial buffering of power output from intermittent winds.

[TheMadMonk]

8. Simply put, because the energy density is shit.

Flywheel storage is a far, far better choice.

[Shankapotomus]

6. Just saw this

This is very exciting! We are now generating light from weight and gravity! This means we can have an eco-friendly energy source for light on demand without waiting for the sun or the wind. If you can be happy with an old time lantern type lighting, then your lighting bill, except for the initial outlay for the equipment, will be a thing of the past. A very encouraging development.

[progressoid]

7. Wow. Cool video from the link:

http://vimeo.com/53588182

[DetlefK]

9. Damnit, can't watch video.

Here's my best guess how it works:
A weight and a slightly lighter counter-weight. The slow downward-movement is first translated into a slow rotation and then via cogs into a fast rotation. The fast rotation finally powers a dynamo.
It would take some really tricky fine-tuning on the two weights to drag that fall out over more than a few minutes.

[Vincardog]

10. $68,399 Raised of $55,000 Goal.