Tech Meets Good: Rice Equals Power

The growth in social entrepreneurs continues to amaze all of us here at Tonic. We are moving away from a world of handouts to one where technology is enabling people in the developing world to live self-sufficient lives without depending on others.

In India's Rice Belt, 350 million people live without reliable electricity. And while they don't have a power grid, they do have lots of rice, and rice husks discarded as part of the rice harvest. Two University of Virginia graduate students, Manoj Sinha and Charles Ransler, have created a proprietary generator that runs on methane-like gas released by heating rice husks.

Indian villages end up with an excess of these husks. The husk-loving duo worked with another engineer from Bihar, India, Gyanesh Pandey, to create a new system to utilize this agricultural waste to create enough electricity to supply 300 to 500 households electricity for eight to 10 hours per day. A byproduct of the process is silica which can be used as fertilizer or as a low-cost ingredient for cement.

With 125,000 Indian villages lacking power, and Husk Power Systems (the trio's company) currently lighting up only five of them, there's lots for the company to do. Ransler recently told The New York Times that he hopes to expand the program's reach to 100 villages within a few years.

The group won first place in 2008 in the University of Virginia business plan competition and the social innovation competition at the University of Texas. Ransler also told the Times that "Business leaders must realize that the world's poor need investments more than handouts ...These are customers, not victims." Let's hope that the Husk Power Systems team will succeed in its work to power India.

The subsequent good that will come out of this achievement will take Indian families out of poverty by providing more options for income, education and wealth. It is also eco-friendly and scalable. This looks like one to watch!

Photos: Top — Charles Ransler and Manoj Sinha (Source: Darden School of Business, UVA). Bottom — Husk Power Systems’ first power plant in Bihar, India, as it was being assembled (Source: Husk Power Systems). Sources: The New York Times, Fast Company

“Technology Meets Good” is a regular Monday feature at Tonic News. If you have cool examples of technology doing good in our world, please email Steve[at]tonic.com.