Lighting Up Lives in Dark Through LED Inverter Bulbs: MEC’s Efficient Lighting Program
By Nitisha Agrawal, Director, Social Impact, MicroEnergy Credits
30th August 2024
While my curiosity and inquisitiveness know no bounds when it comes to women’s kitchens and what kind of cookstoves they use to make their meals for the family, their lighting environment is also a shadow paradox to this curiosity. They go hand in hand, and I don’t mean just from the point of view of energy drudgery and energy ladder but also how it affects the woman and all other members of her family.
Imagine a scenario where a woman is using a highly polluting and rudimentary method of cooking, and her source of light is an incandescent light bulb (ICL) with depleting luminosity or a kerosene lamp emitting dangerous fumes. Of course, ICLs are subject to the availability of electricity for them to be used.
Both these practices exacerbate the situation to a level of extreme drudgery and discomfort, which includes a high level of heat from both cookstoves and ICL bulbs, risk of injuries and burns, fumes of many kinds emitted from both sources and unreliability of light source in situations of power cuts. This scenario would place such households at the bottom of all kinds of socio-economic and health-related pyramids.
On my recent field visit to Howrah in West Bengal, I observed and understood how clean lighting solutions can significantly reduce household energy drudgery and the situation of family members while also reducing the energy cost burden. In some cases, a good lighting environment also helps improve income generation opportunities, as demonstrated by some of the women we met.
We visited villages in two districts of West Bengal, Nadia District and 24 North Paraganas. These districts are distinct from each other in many ways, yet they share a common thread in the lives of people who live in terms of energy drudgery.
My visit was to observe the monitoring process conducted by MicroEnergy Credits for its unique and critical LED Inverter bulb carbon project. As part of this monitoring, we met women and their families in twelve households who shared how the use of these LED inverter bulbs helped them reduce their daily burden at several levels.
The first village we visited was Mahato Pada in Kalyani Block of Nadia District. It's important to establish the geographical context here as Kalyani City, also an administrative block, is an extremely well-planned urban city situated on the banks of the River Hooghly and is a budding tourist destination for people from all over the world.
In contrast, Mahato Pada village can be considered a rural settlement where most of the residents are of migrant origin from the neighboring states of Bihar and Odisha who have come here in search of a better life. There seemed to be a mix of labor and agricultural-led income opportunities for the people in this village. The land here, being on the banks of mighty Hooghly, is fertile, and we could see the ripening lush green fields of corn that seemed to be a primary crop in addition to rice. Most of the households in this village continued to use traditional two-pot mud cookstoves for most of their cooking, indicating their energy drudgery. These cooking areas were outside the house, indicating the importance of proper lighting during the evening hours, as women would need to step outside of the main living area to cook their meals. Most houses had small backyard farms from where the firewood was being collected.
The use of LED bulbs was seen mostly in the living area or a verandah that helped cover a larger area to increase visibility. It was interesting to hear how these bulbs are beneficial at several levels. While LED technology is far more environmentally friendly as compared to incandescent bulbs with a mercury-based filament, these bulbs also do not emit the kind of heat that ICL is known to. This is an important aspect to understand from the user’s point of view in this geography (and would be the case in large parts of India). Being on the banks of River Hooghly, these areas face extreme humidity and intense summer and monsoons. The heat emitted by an incandescent bulb (ICL) or a kerosene lamp would make the environment difficult for a lady cooking in the house, a child studying, or even an elderly person who may not be keeping very well. All women respondents we met were unanimous in sharing that these bulbs are cooling and that they do not feel the heat while being around them.
In Mahato Pada, we met a woman entrepreneur who runs a small utility shop. She chose to install an LED bulb in her establishment. Just this one bulb has helped her increase her business hours and, therefore, her income-generating opportunity. She is now able to keep her establishment open for a longer period of time, and she feels ‘safe in the light’.
Let’s talk about ‘safety and light’. In rural areas with surrounding farmlands, which often become pitch dark with dusk in the absence of streetlights, it becomes virtually impossible to step outside the house for women, young children, and the elderly. The risks include getting bitten by a snake or other poisonous or non-poisonous insects, risk of physical injury, animal and human conflict, and even risk of robbery and other local uncalled-for activity. In the context of Mahato Pada, which is a rural village, a small intervention like a luminous LED inverter bulb in the verandah can help overcome a lot of these impending risks, at least within the surrounding area of the household.
The scenario in the second area we visited is different from the perspective of both households and the community. Shyam Nagar in 24 North Paraganas is more like a semi-urban slum, again a rehabilitation settlement for a migrant population from many neighboring geographies. So while the structures are ‘pucca’ with small allocated rooms and access to electricity, most of these homes face the issue of power cuts.
But before we speak of power cuts, it’s important to establish the need for clean and proper lighting in such homes. Most of these houses are one-room sets where every activity takes place inside that space provided, including cooking, studying for children and young adults, and even entertainment if the family can afford it. If not for these bright LED bulbs, the rooms are poorly lit if the household is using ICL, impacting all major chores of the house.
When the families were interviewed, almost all shared that LED bulbs provide much-needed brightness, help reduce the electricity bill, do not heat like the ICL, and, of course, continue to work for at least four hours in case of power cuts.
An Indian household, whether rural or urban, village or a city, is no stranger to power cuts. We refer to the IRES 2020 Insights from the India Residential Energy Survey. As per the report and as per very visible efforts, India has made commendable efforts in household electrification. However, the report indicates that households in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Haryana, Assam, and Bihar still face the longest power outages, with rural households facing six or more hours of daily outages, long blackouts, low voltages, and appliance damages.
For households that have no electricity access or are subjected to frequent power cuts, chores are often limited to daylight hours, putting more burden on women and thereby impacting the opportunity to utilize evening hours for more leisure-based activities. As with continuous and strenuous work that needs to be finished before the light goes out, women are often too exhausted to indulge in any regenerative activities like skill or hobby building or even education.
While we did not meet any children who might be in the age group to attend school and college and hence the need to study at home, it is safe to assume that there would be many such children and young adults who need proper and continuous lighting in order to study without much discomfort.
Another advantage of inverter LED bulbs is their lifespan compared to any other type of bulb. Since the geographies in question are subjected to frequent power cuts, regular ICL bulbs tend to fuse out in scenarios of fluctuation and low voltage, hence needing to be replaced frequently. This also causes wastage, and some of that waste is dangerous, including glass and mercury filament.
Just through my interaction with these twelve households, I observed multiple advantages and direct benefits of using technology like LED inverter bulbs. Households that are using them shared absolute positive feedback with an intent pointing towards a continuous and long-term use of it.
The price barrier, which affects direct purchase decisions along with access to such technologies, is mitigated through programs like MicroEnergy Credits’ Efficient Lighting program.
These programs are implemented through MEC’s partnership with women’s financial inclusion institutions, which can provide last-mile access and help households opt for these technologies through various financial inclusion programs.
