Dear Members of IEEE India,

IEEE-PELS launched a global competition – Empower a Billion Lives - to create and demonstrate scalable solutions to electricity access for the nearly 4 billion people impacted by energy poverty.

For more details visit the competition website. http://empowerabillionlives.org/

TARGET PRIZE PURSE > $1,000,000

The Goal of the Competition
Foster interdisciplinary innovation in the global community to develop and demonstrate solutions to electricity access that are designed to scale, regionally relevant, holistic, and leverage 21st-century technologies that feature exponentially declining prices.

Preliminary Design Criteria
The competition is agnostic to energy sources, technologies, business models, and will primarily evaluate potential impact and ability to rapidly and sustainably scale the solutions to a Billion customers.
• Holistic sustainable technology-based solutions that are designed to scale
• Accompanied by a viable business plan designed for the Base of the Pyramid
• Integrate communications, Pay/Go, Cybersecurity, microfinance as needed
• Enables electricity access from the bottom-up; without centralized planning
• Address challenges of managing a fleet of millions of devices
• Create new income-generating opportunities for target customer group
• Additional value streams for external stakeholders
• Utilizes carbon-neutral technologies

WHO IS THIS COMPETITION FOR?
• Student teams, Research laboratories
• Small and medium-sized companies
• International corporations
• Nonprofit organizations
• Everyone!

COMPETITION TRACKS
• EXISTING SOLUTIONS: Solutions that are already commercially available, meeting the electricity needs of the target customer group, and have radical scaling potential.
• EMERGING SINGLE-USER SOLUTIONS: New solutions that meet minimum tier 2 needs of a single household in the target customer group.
• EMERGING MULTI-USER SOLUTIONS: Solutions that meet minimum tier 2 needs of a community of users. These devices are expected to be able to create, interconnect and manage a grid (including market functions) from the bottom up.

COMPETITION TIMELINE
ONLINE ROUND MAY 2018
• Present solution concept
• 5-minute pitch video
• Business evaluation: Estimate value and costs
• Technical evaluation: Present technology approach

REGIONAL ROUND- December 2018 (at IIT Madras during IEEE PEDES' 2018 Conference)
• Competition Expo
• Business evaluation: present business plan and scaling roadmap
• Technical evaluation: Demonstrate prototype system and core function
• Present field test plan

GLOBAL ROUND SEP. 2019 (USA)
• Business evaluation: Show function at scale in real locations
• Technical evaluation: Demonstration of ruggedized solution
• Show economic viability, cyber & financial security

For more details visit the competition website. http://empowerabillionlives.org/