IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2021 - 12

Entrepreneur Viewpoint
by Issa Batarseh
IEEE Empower a Billion Lives:
An Opportunity for Innovation
and Entrepreneurship
I
n 2018, the IEEE Power Electronics
Society (PELS) launched
a biennial global competition
known as Empower a Billion Lives
(EBL). As a global initiative, EBL
aims to crowdsource regionally
relevant innovation to accelerate
deployment of energy access solutions
at scale to nearly three billion
people who live in severe energy
poverty. Providing affordable energy
access to them can dramatically
impact their living standard, health,
education, productivity, and ability
to be a part of modern society.
About EBL-I
The first EBL competition was a great
success by all measures and the visibility
it received globally was beyond our
expectations. It attracted 470 teams
from 70 countries, which through a
process involving five regional competitions
and field testing conducted
across four continents, resulting in 23
teams participating in the global finals
in Baltimore, Maryland, US, in 2019.
Over US$500K was given to the selected
teams in support and awards. The
EBL-I competition has attracted more
than a hundred articles, an active presence
on social media, thousands of
blog postings, and press releases with
over 30,000 views of the EBL website,
and 500,000 impressions. EBL also
won the prestigious Summit HumaniDigital
Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2021.3124111
Date of current version: 16 December 2021
tarian Award in 2019 presented by the
American Society of Account Executives.
Motivated by the success of EBLI,
in October PELS launched EBL-II,
giving the professional organizations,
universities, research institutions, businesses
and NGO's another opportunity
for innovation.
Grand Challenge -
The Opportunity
Solving complex problems can appear
challenging, but many times challenges
are disguised under great opportunities
for innovation and
entrepreneurship.
The grant challenge
before us is how to
provide economically
viable and environmentally
sustainable
21st century energy
access solutions to
nearly 3 billion people
around the world
living completely
off-grid, and under
the global technical talent will come
together with WOW! ideas offering the
global community affordable and innovative
solutions in technology, business
models and impact. The impact on
families and communities can be profound,
providing positive outcomes in
areas of health, food security and resilience,
access to water, education,
increased productivity, and livelihood
and lifestyle changes.
The opportunities for technologiSolving
complex
problems can appear
challenging, but many
times challenges
are disguised under
great opportunities
for innovation and
entrepreneurship.
extreme financial poverty with no
infrastructure. However, this energyaccess
grand challenge offers a unique
opportunity to crowdsource innovation
globally with cross-disciplinary teams,
to spark creativity that can generate
unexpected outcomes. We believe that
12 IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE z December 2021
cal innovation and commercialization
of solutions are tremendous. The
proposed solutions can range from an
entire power generation to productive
use of appliances to enabling technology
solutions. More specifically,
the opportunities for innovation may
include, but not limited
to: (1) Developing
solutions with
new business and
microfinance models,
(2) deploying
scalable, expandable
and sustainable
solutions across
mult iple reg ions
with diverse subsystems
with " lastmile "
challenges, (3)
solutions that promote gender empowerment,
(4) solutions that enable
regional employment with digital and
financial inclusion, (5) solutions that
provide values to external stakeholders
and building new customer income opportunities
and new revenue streams.
IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2021
