Student Solar Ambassadors Workshop on the 150th Birth Anniversary of Gandhi Jayanti, 2nd October 2018 for 1 Lakh Students
Mumbai: As part of Diamond Jubilee celebrations and to commemorate the 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Nation, IIT Bombay is organising ‘Student Solar Ambassadors Workshop’ on October 2, 2018, , wherein 5,000 students from 80-100 schools will come together at IIT Bombay campus and will learn to assemble their own solar study lamps designed to help them to fulfil their study light needs. At the end of the event, students will take-home a solar study lamp made by themselves.
Background:
In the face of growing challenges of climate change and rising global temperatures, the world has to move towards adoption of 100% Renewable Energy to limit the average increase in global temperature by 2℃. With India’s pledge to the Paris Climate Agreement of reducing carbon emission by 30-35% of 2005 level, it has committed to mitigating climate degradation with the installation of 100GW of Renewable Energy by 2022.
India’s vast potential in terms of solar insolation of 4-7 kWh per m2 per day for more than 325 days in a year, one should utilize this advantage to fulfill nearly all domestic energy requirements, to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. It is important to sensitize the 280 million enrolled students on the importance of solar energy, its usage, and its contribution in greener future.
About the workshop
If students, in their early age, learn to make their own solar devices and use them, not only they will likely to be future users of the solar energy but they will also be promoting its usage in their own generations, thus are likely to become Student Solar Ambassadors. With this in mind, IIT Bombay, as part of its Diamond Jubilee celebrations, is organizing a unique one-day training program on 2nd October 2018.
Further, more than 1 lakh students across the country will take a part in the similar events apart from these 5,000 students. In every state of India at least a few schools will take part in the event. IIT Bombay will train master trainers who will then provide training to 1 lakh students to make their own lamps on 2nd October. The solar lamp kits will be provided by IIT Bombay. Though the cost of each kit is about INR. 500 students will get this lamp at INR. 100 only, which is part of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), GoI program being planned, executed and monitored by IIT Bombay.
Through this workshop, the scientific curiosity of young minds will be piqued towards clean technologies for the future, by making them Student Solar Ambassadors. These students could be the future users of the clean renewable technology and can help in the realization of the 100% renewable energy based energy access reducing the carbon footprint. The training of such a large number of school going students on the assembly of solar study lamps at a single platform on a single day could possibly qualify for the Guinness book of world record. On this occasion, a website has been launched for the school registrations: (www.solarstudents.org)
The event is jointly organized by Solar Urja through Localization for Sustainability (SoULS) initiative and Techfest at IIT Bombay.