"SoULS Initiative, IIT Bombay" has won the grand prize in the IEEE's Empower a Billion Lives (EBL) competition, the finals of which was held during September last week at Baltimore, USA. The award includes a citation and grand prize of $ 100,000 (Rs 71 lakh). "Solar Urja through Localization for Sustainability" or SoULS initiative, a flagship program of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, is based on the idea of 'Power to All', including active interventions for providing clean, efficient, affordable and reliable energy access even to the last mile households.
SoULS initiative encourages a localized solution involving local communities (localization) and ensures the transition from a 'program-driven model' to 'market-driven model'.
Starting from a pool of 459 registered teams from 70+ countries, EBL has gone through a rigorous evaluation process by a team of international experts at five regional competitions to select 23 global finalists. Selection of the final winners was based on technology, social impact, business models and field-testing data.
IEEE's EBL is a global competition aimed at fostering innovation to develop solutions to energy access.
IIT Bombay's SoULS Initiative has been selected for the finals after winning the 'Grand Regional Prize' winner at the regional rounds held on December 18, 2018 at Chennai.
Prof. Chetan Singh Solanki (Dept. of Energy Science and Engineering) and Prof. Jayendran Venketeswaran (Dept. of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research), who are the principal investigators of the SoULS Initiative represented SoULS in the event.
The Institute officials congratulated Prof. Venkateswaran, Prof. Solanki and their team members for the achievement.
The competition is organized by IEEE, an all-volunteer organization whose goal is to foster technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity.
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