Design and Applications of Solar Lantern Using Off-the-shelf Components for Humanitarian Activities

Light and light-based technologies play important roles in modern life, especially for lighting purposes. A simple pico-solar lighting system will be very helpful to improve the quality of life of communities which do not have access to electricity grid. This paper reports the work in designing a simple solar lantern system using off-the-shelf components suitable for STEM outreaches at high schools in form of workshop, while at the same time the outcomes of the workshop be used for humanitarian activities for simple lighting in communities which lack of access to electricity grid. The work includes workshops in several high schools in the surrounding of Jakarta, which includes lecture, hand-on session on construction, troubleshooting, and outdoor measurements of the solar lantern. The resulted solar lanterns were then donated to people in remote areas in the interior of Papua. With slight modification, the system was also turned into cheap street lighting poles for a garbage collector community in Bintara, Bekasi.