Empower Billion Lives

Global Competition to Develop Scalable Solutions to Energy Poverty
The IEEE Empower a Billion Lives competition has received enormous interest with more than 450 teams registered from all over the world. After an online round in August 2018, and five regional rounds all around the world between November 2018 and February 2019, the competition reaches its culmination point at the Global Final that will take place at ECCE 2019 in Baltimore MD. This is a proposal to accept EBL as a special session and provide support to host the event for the 23 Global Finalist Teams on Saturday and Sunday (Sept. 28 – 29th).

Description of Empower a Billion Lives
IEEE Empower a Billion Lives (EBL) is organized as a global competition by the IEEE Power Electronics Society. EBL is looking to develop new mechanisms for crowdsourcing the development of scalable solutions to energy access, which can rapidly improve the lifestyle and livelihood of the 1.1 billion people who live off-grid, and the 3 billion people who live with severe energy poverty. The current approach to resolving this issue is to build or extend the grid to these communities, at a cost point that is simply not viable. Even if we were to miraculously succeed in our mission, and were able to lift their living standards to OECD levels using today’s available technology, this would result in 3.7 Gigatons/year more in carbon emissions – an environmental catastrophe!
The EBL competition was launched in 2018 as a biennial global competition to help teams around the world develop energy access solutions that could provide economically viable and scalable solutions for communities with average incomes of less than $2 per day. It was felt that teams regionally would know their community needs, and would be able to offer viable solutions to improve their productivity and livelihood. Teams would be evaluated in terms of technology, social impact and business factors, with an emphasis on the ability to scale their solutions rapidly and sustainably. The competition was conceptualized and organized by the IEEE Power Electronics Society and its volunteers and staff, with strong support from several organizations including the Center for Distributed Energy at Georgia Tech. For further details on EBL, please visit empowerabillionlives.org.

Dr. Deepak Divan is Professor, John E Pippin Chair, GRA Eminent Scholar, and Director of the Center for Distributed Energy at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA.. Dr. Divan is an elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, member of the National Academies Board on Energy and Environmental Systems, a Fellow of the IEEE, past President of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, and is a recipient of the IEEE William E Newell Field Medal. He has 65 issued and pending patents, and over 400 refereed publications. He has founded or seeded several new ventures including Soft Switching Technologies, Innovolt, Varentec and Smart Wires, which together have raised >$160M in venture funding. He received his B. Tech from IIT Kanpur, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Calgary, Canada.

Szilard Liptak is a research engineer at the Center for Distributed Energy at Georgia Tech. He has work experience in seven countries on three continents. He is an energy access specialist with good understanding of both mechanical and electrical aspects of product design. His primary research interests are off-grid solar systems,