IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - March 2018 - 20

be needed to meet future societal
needs. This change will not be driven
by the market leaders, as it would
entail dramatically shrinking revenues; instead, it will be pioneered by
entrepreneurs who will build new
business models with new technologies, delivering new value across
many areas to multiple stakeholders.
To help the under- and unserved,
these innovators will dramatically
reduce the cost of delivering electricity as a service and improve the overall technology, including that of
cloud building, microfinance, mobile
wa llets, pay-go schemes, sma r tphones, and applications. As the cost
of delivering services shrinks, building a sustainable and profitable business to serve billions who need the
most help will be possible.
IEEE Empower a Billion Lives
seeks to unleash the entrepreneur

in all of us. It encourages competing tea ms to think holistica lly;
look beyond purely core technology issues; a nd include business
models, regulatory concerns, scaling, and sustainability. It encourages regiona lly releva nt solutions
built on global exponential technologies, and it requires that the solutions be demonstrated in the field,
at reasonable scale, and in a relevant setting. Because technology
costs are declining exponentially,
demonstrating a solution can be inexpensive, and a large number of
teams will be able to participate in
the early regional rounds. Financial support will be available for
advanced rounds, leading up to the
global finals in the United States
in 2019.
Some of the challenges that competitor teams can address in the

IEEE Empower a Billion Lives Competition include the following:
■■operating single homes or small offgrid communities with mostly PV
solar energy without excessive and
expensive energy storage
■■operating geographically dispersed
microgrids with or without the bulk
ac grid
■■providing real-time pricing for
every generator, storage, or load
device on a microgrid or grid without fast communications and
expensive centralized control
■■building nanogrids and microgrids
from the bottom up using a LEGO
building-block approach so that the
systems can be installed, maintained, and serviced in the field
without a high level of technical
competence
■■producing an ecosystem of smart
devices without very expensive
and extensive communications
infrastructure.
The energy industry is beginning a
decade of major change, but there is
no clarity on how and where the
change will occur. This is a unique
moment for entrepreneurs to drive
disruptive change and reform the
industry into a more advanced, sustainable, and lower-cost energy infrastructure. For more information on
IEEE Empower a Billion Lives, please
visit empowerabillionlives.org.

About the Author
Deepak Divan (ddivan@gatech.edu)
is a National Academy of Engineering
member, IEEE Fellow, and past president of the IEEE Power Electronics
Society. He is a professor and director
of the Center for Distributed Energy at
Georgia Tech. He also serves as founder and chief scientist of Varentec, a
company focused on grid edge control
that is funded by a clean-tech venture
capital firm, Khosla Ventures, and
investor Bill Gates. Varentec is his
third start-up company.

Reference
[1] IEEE Empower a Billion Lives. (2017). IEEE.
[Online]. Available: empowerabillionlives.org

IEEE PowEr ElEctronIcs MagazInE

z March 2018

http://www.empowerabillionlives.org http://www.ITG-Electronics.com http://www.empowerabillionlives.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - March 2018