Solar Cow for Energy and Education

I am Sen, CEO and found of YOLK, a solar technology company. Our goal is to bring innovative solutions to enhance energy access for people living in off-grid areas, while simultaneously tackling challenges of child labor in these low-income communities. With Solar Cow, we have created a photovoltaic system that can charge 250 portable batteries each day. These batteries can be fitted with LED lamps and radio sets, or used for charging small devices such as phones. The systems are installed in schools so that children can charge batteries while studying to bring home after class. This energy access incentivizes their parents to send their children to school rather than keeping them home to work. Before this, YOLK created portable solar charger Solar Paper, the lightest solar module with a minimum weight of less than 100 grams. This raised over one million USD via Kickstarter and won several international awards. 

Child labor, education and energy distribution are complex challenges that are most often addressed individually. Families suffer from poverty in rural areas face multiple challenges. Especially, without electricity, they pay up to 20% of their income on energy, either kerosene for lighting or for phone charging from kiosks. Thus, even where schooling is available, parents face pressure to send their children to work rather than class in order to boost the household income.

The Solar Cows are photovoltaic energy systems that can be installed in schools or community places in off-grid areas to help tackle the challenges of access to energy and to education simultaneously. The students can charge portable batteries to take home each day after class to provide electricity for lighting or to charge cell phones in their homes.

With this, the Solar Cow project combats child labor by incentivizing parents with energy access and facilitate educational opportunities.

The Solar Cow photovoltaic system is designed to combat child labor and enhance their educational opportunities by providing energy access to families.

Education is crucial as a means of helping people escape from poverty and achieve sustainable development. However, some 262m of the world’s children were out of school in 2017, and Some 168m children are engaged in child labor in the world. This deprives them of their childhood and the opportunity to attend school. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest incidence of child labor, with some 21% of children (59m) engaged in the practice. They are most often engaged in agriculture, especially in rural areas (ILO 2019).

Even where schooling is available, parents may feel pressured to send children to work rather than class in order to supplement income. Installing Solar Cow charging systems in schools and giving portable batteries to students encourages parents to send their children to class instead of work by helping them to obtain a valuable source of energy each school day. This contributes to SDG 4.1 on primary and secondary education as well as SDG 8.7, which includes targets on eliminating child labor.

Our project’s core technology, the Solar Cow, is a photovoltaic energy generating system that can be installed in schools in off-grid areas to tackle both of child labor and lack of energy access. The Solar Cow system consists of a solar system and around 250 portable rechargeable batteries, known as “power milk”. These batteries are given to students to take home each school day after class. The batteries provide electricity to charge cell phones, as well as use light and radio functions. This affordable, clean and sustainable power source also creates an immediate and tangible incentive for families to send their children to school instead of having them involved in different forms of child labor in order to gain family income.

Solar Cows mainly serve low-income families living without power connections. They are often obliged to use low-quality fuel for lighting (candles and kerosene) and use diesel generators for other energy needs which cause indoor air pollution, the effects of which kill 739,000 people in Africa each year (WHO 2018). Also, due to poverty, they are tempted to send their children to work instead of school to earn income, yet due to the lack of educational opportunities, their children may lose chances to obtain higher skills and education which can in turn help to generate better income in future. Solar Cow address their needs of affordable and sustainable energy access as well as helping to foster educational opportunities for their children. 

The Solar Cow project solves the intertwined issues of child labor and poverty by providing energy access to the households, especially living in off-grid area and poverty. By incentivizing the parents with energy access and cost-saving benefits, the project the project elevates educational opportunities for children to help break the cycle of poverty in the long run. It also gives families immediate better quality of life by using affordable electricity. 

Our idea stemmed from our concern over child labor, which is widely practiced in the developing world, especially in Africa. Our ultimate aim is to use innovation to break the cycle of poverty exacerbated by using child labor in low-income communities by encouraging access to education. We believed that if parents can obtain more economic benefits by sending children to school than by sending them to work, we can solve the issue of child labor while actually increasing users’ real economic situation. Solar Cows were designed to provide energy access to families in need of electricity through school children. The costs of current energy resources such as kerosene, candles and/or charging kiosks can be saved by using Solar Cow systems and portable batteries.

We believe that all people should have equal access to meet their basic needs, education and self-development. Education is crucial as a means of helping people escape from poverty and achieve sustainable development, yet the wide practice of child labor hinders their opportunities to grow in knowledge, experience and skills for a better economic and quality life status. Some 262m of the world’s children were out of school in 2017. Sub-Saharan Africa had the worst attendance rates with 21% of kids (34m) not in primary school, 36% (27m) not in lower secondary and 57% (36m) not attending upper secondary school (UNESCO 2019). At the same time, some 168m children are engaged in child labor in the world. This deprives them of their childhood and the opportunity to attend school. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest incidence of child labor, with some 21% of children (59m) engaged in the practice.

This is why Solar Cow approach can work for the children to come to school for their educational opportunities by rewarding their parents with energy access and cost-saving for it.

YOLK is well-positioned because its qualified team is already executing all aspects of the project. The YOLK team has created a vision, developed it into a practical solution, which it is now implementing to improve the daily lives of thousands of people. It started from conceptualizing the problem and realizing that seemingly distant issues in education, access to electricity and child labor, can be connected and solved by the Solar Cow. To date, three Solar Cows have been installed with 550 Power Milk batteries distributed, serving 2,420 people. This experience motivated the Kenyan government to purchase 15 more Solar Cows in 2020 totaling up to 4,500 families and around 198,000 people. After helping to combat three world issues in a single solution – education, energy poverty and mitigating carbon emissions through green energy – we believe this creative process is a skill characteristic of our team. Before the Solar Cow project began, we had been developing innovative technology in solar energy sector, our expertise was demonstrated with the creation of the world’s smallest portable solar charger “Solarade” and world’s thinnest and lightest solar charger “Solar Paper”, acknowledged for its expertise by 2019 CES Innovation Award and ISPO.

A recent setback for us has been the restrictions caused by COVID-19 on the practical immediate value of Solar Cows. The essential component of the project is the trade-off that “Children attend classes, and after class receive charged batteries to take home to power their households”. This has been significantly compromised by the pandemic, since children cannot physically attend classes for education although the charging station installed in school is still accessible. The challenge was to find ways to offer the same value to parents while keeping the growth mindset alive. First, our team considered offering a small radio device separate from the Power Milk batteries, but with some creativity and expertise, YOLK has designed an MP3 device built into the battery. The portable solar rechargeable battery will function as a charger, an LED flashlight and also in-built MP3 Player. We are turning a challenge into an opportunity, to expand our vision and test the limits of our knowledge.

I, Sung Un Shang, am CEO and founder of YOLK. With the company’s innovative and hybrid approach of design-thinking and energy focused appropriate technology, we have won many international awards such as 2019 AidEX Innovation Award and TIME’s 2019 Innovation Project. With Kick-starter’s over one million USD fund raising achievement for our company’s Solar Paper, a paper like light weight, portability and easy expansion, I have proved my creative leadership ability through considering first the consumer’s needs and challenging ourselves to make the products to be fitting. The Solar Cow approach is another evidence that highlights my leadership and the company’s project leading potential in the areas of tackling word issues through technology integrated in design. With this innovative approach of Solar Cow which chips away the child labour with the energy access incentive to the parents, YOLK has world-widely recognized through Reuters, CES, AidEx and TIME’s awards and we have proven our potential to grow more in the area of human development and our contribution for it. 

YOLK’s Solar Cow charging system is an innovative and affordable way to provide energy, as well as encouraging access to education in areas where low-income families may be tempted to send children to work instead of school. The solar charging systems are installed in schools, where each student is given a power bank to charge during class. Getting children to carry the batteries home not only cuts out any “last mile” infrastructure costs of power distribution, it also rewards their school attendance with the tangible benefit of clean and affordable energy.

Since Power Milk batteries are only compatible with Solar Cows, this forms a closed system, preventing theft or misappropriation. Each battery also has a unique ID matched to an individual student, meaning it cannot be charged by anyone else. This ID also collects data on student’s attendance and charging use, building an evidence base on system use and increased school attendance. We intend to collect user fees through a mobile pay as you go system, which will be secure and efficient, and will also enable collection of data on payments. Each Solar Cow can charge 500 batteries per day. With one battery per family, each system provides light and enough power to charge radios and cell phones to 4,400 people, based on Kenyan average household size of 4.4 (ArcGIS 2016). As such, Solar Cows can provide a basic energy supply to a whole village while preventing children from being involved in child labor, but securing studying time at school.

Our theory of change with Solar Cow is that through providing energy access, children and families will have more educational and self-development opportunities by transforming their life pattern, breaking the vicious cycle of poverty.

Solar Cows are more affordable, accessible and powerful than their solar and non-solar alternatives. For customers, they are ten times cheaper than charging kiosks, three times more powerful than solar lanterns and they defeat “the last mile” by convenient, but unconventional distribution. Our two pilot programs showed that instead of paying KSH 20 for a 500MA (at charging station), parents willingly opt for charging 3,000MA for half the price (with Solar Cow). Given this opportunity to obtain more power at a cheaper cost, the Solar Cow system incentivizes families to send kids to school and pay the daily fees. The system also discourages the use of low-quality fuels (kerosene and diesel generators) that annually poison millions of Africans. From the manufacturing side, the modular nature of our solar panels makes replacement and maintenance affordable and easy.

Our project’s innovation comes from an unconventional product design and a socially responsible mindset. There are 600m Africans that do not have access to energy and the driving force of our project is unlimited solar energy. Efficient supply and strong demand encourage us to believe it will be possible to expand beyond our current countries of operation. Successful pilot studies in Tanzania and Kenya encouraged us to envision 3,000 Solar Cows and 4.5m improved lives by 2025, focusing on marginalized communities of children, women and refugees.

To date we have distributed about 800 portable batteries for households to serve around 5,000 people with access to green energy in these homes. We aim to serve at least 2m people in one year, and 10m by 2025.

We aim to reach to 10,000,000 Solar Cow beneficiaries by 2025. To do so, we aim to move to a franchise model, with local entrepreneurs taking over the maintenance and operation of systems. We have found indications that Solar Cows can be commercially viable in future. For example, at Mchinjiri school in Kwale, Kenya, user uptake is increasing, even with users paying a $2-$3/month fee to charge batteries. We can expect such returns in other high-population schools in similar contexts, enabling system operation to become a business. For example: If 500 students pay $3/month for Solar Cow charging, generating $1,500/month, the entrepreneur can draw a $300 salary, with $100 reserve for repairs, $100 to reinvest in the community and return $1,000 to YOLK to cover system costs. This will enable the solution to scale up quickly and with momentum. Meanwhile, for lower-income users such as in Mtimbwani, Kenya, we will apply a hybrid model with the capital costs of Solar Cows covered by donors in order to reduce user fees. In such cases, $1/month user fee will be sufficient, generating $500/month from 500 students. This revenue can be divided without the $1,000 return to YOLK. In this way, we can make our Solar Cows sustainable and revenue-generating while achieving the goals to serve various low-income communities.

The existing barriers are 1) technological risk, 2) financial issues related to supply chains and 3) legal considerations. Firstly, technological risk is related to system breakdown which would prevent users from charging batteries and therefore reducing revenue generation and/or raise repair costs. Secondly, as YOLK is based in Korea and our target beneficiaries are mainly in off-grid areas of African countries, the cost-effectiveness of supply chains need to be considered. Thirdly, the import process and taxation can be a cost barrier since the rules in countries are applied differently depending on government policy. This taxation can increase Solar Cow’s costs, hence, out product’s price competiveness can be affected. Market barriers due to the policy changes needs to be considered as well. As Solar Cow’s main target and beneficiaries are people with limited access to electricity, living in off-grid areas, future national grid connections could provide YOLK’s target customers with another energy source, meaning that YOLK’s customer market will be relatively reduced.

First of all, the technological risk of the system breakdown can be overcome by training local staff to install, maintain and repair components so that any disruption from technology failure can be resolved quickly at a low cost. Secondly, financial supply chain issues can also be amended by having local staff to assemble system components in-country instead of importing the whole system. Ensuring the country’s government policy on that solar system related taxation is free can be another way lowering the cost barriers to reach out to more customers. Lastly, reductions of off-grid areas are unavoidable and even desirable for local communities, however, the International Energy Agency estimates that some 720m people will still not have access to electricity by 2040. Moreover, the charges for connection to the national grid can be costly, exceeding the low level of income of the people. In this regard, YOLK’s Solar Cow can still be cost-effective in the market for our target customers.

Energy for Impact is the organization that YOLK is partnering with to implement the pilot projects in Kenya to serve communities living in off-grid areas. Site-selection, charging system installation, daily monitoring and user related research have been conducted through the partnership.

E3Empower is YOLK’s partner organization in Tanzania to serve the beneficiary school’s students and their families. Monitoring the system and students attendance records has been conducted through this partnership, based on funding from the Korea International Cooperation Agency.

Korea Food for the Hungry International has been partnering with YOLK to select a possible site for system installation in order to provide electricity and encourage the students’ school attendance in Malawi.

YOLK’s business model is to generate revenue through marketing Solar Cows to potential system donors and generating charging fees from the end-users - the families living in off-grid areas without electricity.

This business model can operate as a solely commercial or a hybrid model supported by donor funds.

Business to government (B2G): This model involves the purchase/rental of Solar Cows in bulk by education-related government ministries and agencies for installation in schools. This can be implemented and/or co-funded with development partners already working in-country (i.e. UNICEF’s Cash Plus programme in Kenya)

Business to customer (B2C): We aim to reach to 10,000,000 Solar Cow beneficiaries by 2025. To do so, we aim to move to a franchise model, with local entrepreneurs taking over the maintenance and operation of systems. We found indications that Solar Cows can be commercially viable in future. For example, at Mchinjiri school in Kenya, user uptake is increasing, even with a $2-$3/month user fee. We can expect such returns in other high-population schools in similar contexts, enabling system operation to become a business. For example, if 500 students pay $3/month for Solar Cow charging, generating $1,500/month, the entrepreneur draw a $300 salary, with $100 reserve for repairs, $100 to reinvest in the community and return $1,000 to YOLK to cover system costs. This model will enable the solution to scale up quickly and with momentum. 

In terms of offering the service to the individual users, the Solar Cow system can be financially sustainable even with low fees thanks to its unique way of distributing energy to off-grid rural households. For example, the representatives of 250 households will charge batteries at stations installed next to schools or publicly used areas, and this being a cost-effective way of supplying electricity because it bridges the challenging “last mile” of power provision without any energy transmission infrastructure.

In addition, as mentioned earlier, YOLK’s business model to sell the Solar Cow system and service to other organizations and receive grants will make more sustainable path for YOLK to take in order to expend this service to larger groups. All the combinations of collecting user fees, receiving Governmental and charity funds and collaborating with other organizations working for the energy and educational related issues, will all add strength to YOLK’s financial sustainability stronger.

●   Korean International Cooperation Agency Creative Technology Solutions  Program: $250,000 to upgrade the prototype Solar Cow system to better suit country circumstances (grant).

●   P4G (Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030): $100,000 to implement two Solar Cows over the next 12 months (grant).

●  H-on dream (Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-Gu Foundation): $15,000

●  Scientists and engineers without Bolders( SEWB) - purchased the the Solar Cow System at the cost of $30,000

For the current project, we seek no further funds at the moment, Elevate Prize funding is sufficient for further development of our elevate prize project.

Yet, we plan to seek USD 2m in equity funding to implement 200 Solar Cows and a further USD 0.3m to establish a production line, USD 0.5m for salaries and USD 0.2m for consulting and certification process for the Clean Development Mechanism. Business model 1: Franchise - With an uptake of 500 students at $3/student, we will cover capital outlay for systems in about three years. Business model 2: Korea has the highest price for carbon emissions reduction (CER) in the world at about USD 35/ton compared to EUR 0.23/ton in Europe. Solar Cow can achieve CER by replacing kerosene lamps with LEDs. One Solar Cow can achieve CER of 20 tons/school/year. 

There is greater CER potential when batteries are used to power cookstoves. When Solar Cow's power is used for a tier 4 type cook stove, it can contribute for complete combustion and reduce the wood and CO2 emissions. Based on previous cases, the estimated amount is 300 tons/school/year for solely this contribution. In one year, CER price $35 x 300 tons will cover the costs of Solar Cow systems. If we invest user fee revenue in new Solar Cows, we can also increase our impact geometrically. 

YOLK’s estimated expenses the first half year for 2020 mainly fall into three categories: 1) USD 100,000 for local installations of Solar Cows in Kenya, 2) USD 150,000 for personnel expenses, 3) USD 20,000~30,000 for travel expenses.

The Elevate Prize would help YOLK overcome the  technology and costs related to supply chain barriers, as we can then expend our system distribution and invest in more networks. 

If we win the Prize, we will be able to use at least the USD 300,000 to install 10 Solar Cows systems in schools in off-grid areas. Along with these systems, we will distribute 2,500 batteries including led lamps. The cost of installing and distributing this hardware will be around USD 200,000, and we will use USD 100,000 for personnel expenses for the two-year duration of the project, USD 50,000 for staff travel and USD 50,000 for marketing and training of staff and users in the field.

Moreover, the professional management and development services, mentor-ship and coaching as part of the Prize would be invaluable to YOLK in further raising the capability of our team – in key areas such as concretizing our business plan and fine-tuning our franchise model. Connection to the Prize’s affiliated industry leaders and experts would help enhance our own network, enabling us to forge the connections necessary to take our next steps in taking our project to a larger scale.

The Solar Cow has proven to be a media-friendly product, and we would appreciate the opportunity to tell its story to an even larger audience as an Elevate Prize Global Hero. For this reason, winning the Prize will add more strength to YOLK to expend the energy distribution and educational opportunity for the global community.

Our goal is to network with like-minded people and organizations who see the potential in our Solar Cow project and would like to help us advance it to its fullest reach by assisting us in terms of funding and marketing during and after COVID-19.

As our project is multi-faceted, except the energy provision during the COVID-19 crisis, Power Milk, the portable battery will be accompanied with an MP3 player for radio education support and will facilitate religious practices. Technology however comes so far, even though there is an established online available educational material that could be installed on the MP3 Player in Kenya, such opportunities are not available in Tanzania. Hence, we would consider also contributing to development of educational material for radio education in Kenya by partnering with EkStep Foundation. This foundation has established an online educational platform in India that has been successful. We are involved in their work and would love to partner with them or similar initiatives.

Also, the Korea Food for the Hungry is planning to partner with YOLK to provide three Solar Cows to remotely located primary schools in Malawi. All of these forms of cooperation will help extend Solar Cow services to the communities in need of electricity and educational opportunities for the better quality of life.