The Eternal Candle

About

Technology Currently, nearly two billion impoverished people worldwide are without electricity and burn fuel for illumination. As developing countries modernize they are in the position to select better, more efficient and possibly renewable lighting technologies thus offering an opportunity for technological leapfrogging over more industrialized countries. In particular, off-grid solid-state lighting such as white light-emitting diode (WLED) technologies provide more and better illumination than do fuels (~1000 times more lumens per watt), thus dramatically reducing operating costs and carcinogenic / green house gas emissions whilst increasing the quality and quantity of illumination. Our patent pending invention is of an off-grid WLED lantern that can be powered by the untapped and substantial renewable energy source which is the intense solar electromagnetic (EM) radiation during the daytime hours and cool night-time temperatures in dry desert-type climates such as sub-Saharan Africa and large regions of India, China and central Asia. In much the same way that photo voltaic (PV) systems collect and store daytime PV solar energy in batteries for use in the night time, this invention collects and stores the heat from EM radiation during daylight hours. Simple thermopile technology converts the thermal energy directly to electricity and powers one or more high efficiency & low power WLEDs during the cooler dark hours of the night time. A major innovation of this invention is the simple phase-change energy storage concept which, during the energy discharging period when the lamp is lit, retains the temperature differential required to keep the lamp illuminated for a substantial period of time.