The LuminAID is a solar-rechargeable light that packs flat and inflates to diffuse light like a lantern. LuminAID technology was invented in 2010 by Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta.
The LuminAID light has a solar panel, rechargeable battery, and a multi-chip LED light. [1] According to its makers, after a full charge, it can deliver 35 lumens for 8 hours or 20 lumens for 16 hours and the battery can be recharged over 500 times, for years of use. [2]
The product has won first place in several business competitions, including the $100K Midwest 2013 Clean Energy Challenge, the William James Business Plan Competition, and the Chicago Booth School of Business Social New Venture Challenge. [3] [4] In 2016, LuminAID was granted a patent by the United States Patent Office for their lighting technology. [5]
LuminAID Lab is the manufacturer and producer of LuminAID lights. The company was founded in 2011 by Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta, who invented the technology in 2010 in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake while at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. [6] They later experienced firsthand the damage caused by large-scale disasters while on a school trip during the March 2011 earthquake in Japan. [7]
The inventors saw its potential as an outdoor recreation accessory in the US and began marketing it in that way. [8] Its launch was linked to Indiegogo in an arrangement whereby purchasers could either buy two for $25, with one unit sent to a developing country, or buy a single unit for $10 to be donated. [9]
As of July 2021, LuminAID's website has 9 different solar lanterns for sale, along with a solar speaker. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]
Stork and Sreshta appeared on ABC's Shark Tank in February 2015 seeking a deal to fund their company. They received offers from all five of the "sharks," and accepted a deal with Mark Cuban for $200,000 for 15 percent of their company's equity. [15]
Sreshta said that Cuban has helped her and Stork to stay innovative. LuminAID's solar lanterns now double as phone chargers, and the lanterns are being sold in retail stores for camping and outdoor use too. [16]
After working together to distribute lights in the Philippines in 2013 after a typhoon, LuminAID and ShelterBox, an organization that provides disaster relief services, became strategic partners. [17] [18]
An electric light, lamp, or light bulb is an electrical component that produces light. It is the most common form of artificial lighting. Lamps usually have a base made of ceramic, metal, glass, or plastic, which secures the lamp in the socket of a light fixture, which is often called a "lamp" as well. The electrical connection to the socket may be made with a screw-thread base, two metal pins, two metal caps or a bayonet mount.
The lux is the unit of illuminance, or luminous flux per unit area, in the International System of Units (SI). It is equal to one lumen per square metre. In photometry, this is used as a measure of the intensity, as perceived by the human eye, of light that hits or passes through a surface. It is analogous to the radiometric unit watt per square metre, but with the power at each wavelength weighted according to the luminosity function, a model of human visual brightness perception, standardized by the CIE and ISO. In English, "lux" is used as both the singular and plural form.
A flashlight or torch is a portable hand-held electric lamp. Formerly, the light source typically was a miniature incandescent light bulb, but these have been displaced by light-emitting diodes (LEDs) since the mid-2000s. A typical flashlight consists of the light source mounted in a reflector, a transparent cover to protect the light source and reflector, a battery, and a switch, all enclosed in a case.
Bicycle lighting is illumination attached to bicycles whose purpose above all is, along with reflectors, to improve the visibility of the bicycle and its rider to other road users under circumstances of poor ambient illumination. A secondary purpose is to illuminate reflective materials such as cat's eyes and traffic signs. A third purpose may be to illuminate the roadway so that the rider can see the way ahead. Serving the latter purposes require much more luminous flux and thus more power.
SureFire, LLC. is an American company headquartered in Fountain Valley, California. Their main products are flashlights, weapon-mounted lights, headlamps, and laser sights. In addition, Surefire produces knives, sound suppressors, earplugs, Picatinny Rails, magazines, and batteries. The company is a major supplier of flashlights, weapon lights, and lasers to the U.S. Armed Forces and its allies, especially for elite special operations groups such as the Navy SEALs. Surefire products are widely used in the U.S. by law enforcement agencies and SWAT teams.
Luminous efficacy is a measure of how well a light source produces visible light. It is the ratio of luminous flux to power, measured in lumens per watt in the International System of Units (SI). Depending on context, the power can be either the radiant flux of the source's output, or it can be the total power consumed by the source. Which sense of the term is intended must usually be inferred from the context, and is sometimes unclear. The former sense is sometimes called luminous efficacy of radiation, and the latter luminous efficacy of a light source or overall luminous efficacy.
Light tubes are structures that transmit or distribute natural or artificial light for the purpose of illumination and are examples of optical waveguides.
The splendid lanternshark is a shark of the family Etmopteridae found in the western Pacific at depths between 120 and 210 m. Through the classification of Etmopterus species into several clades based on the positioning of their bioluminescent photophores, the splendid lanternshark can be considered a member of the Etmopterus pusillus clade.
Empower Playgrounds, Inc. is a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) public charity that has developed electricity-generating playground equipment for use in rural third-world communities with low rates of rural electrification. The charity works in predominantly subsistence agriculture communities, where children often work on family farms until sundown, and schools and homes are not equipped with electricity, making it difficult for children to do homework or develop study habits.
A solar lamp, also known as a solar light or solar lantern, is a lighting system composed of an LED lamp, solar panels, battery, charge controller and there may also be an inverter. The lamp operates on electricity from batteries, charged through the use of solar panel
A lantern battery is a rectangular battery, typically an alkaline or zinc-carbon primary battery, used primarily in flashlights or lanterns. Lantern batteries are physically larger and consequently offer higher capacity than the more common flashlight batteries. Lantern batteries comprise multiple cells inside a housing.
Focus Lighting is a New York City based architectural lighting design firm founded by Paul Gregory in 1987.
Tideland Signal, sometimes referred to as Tidelands, was a privately held, Houston, Texas based manufacturer of marine navigational aids, with main offices in Lafayette, Louisiana, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Burgess Hill, UK, Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Singapore. It was the manufacturer of the ML-300 lantern, widely used in lighthouses around the world for more than 50 years.
Solar powered flashlights or solar powered torches are flashlights powered by solar energy stored in rechargeable batteries. Most of these flashlights use light-emitting diodes lamps since they have lower energy consumption compared to incandescent light bulbs.
Solar street lights are raised light sources which are powered by solar panels generally mounted on the lighting structure or integrated into the pole itself. The solar panels charge a rechargeable battery, which powers a fluorescent or LED lamp during the night.
Solar traffic lights are signalling devices powered by solar panels positioned at road intersections, pedestrian crossings and other locations to control the flows of traffic. They assign the right of way to road users by the use of lights in standard colors, using a universal color code.
BioLite is a New York City-based startup company that produces off-grid energy products for outdoor recreational use and emerging markets. The company is known for its wood-burning stoves that use thermoelectric technology to create usable electricity from the heat of their fires. It was founded in 2006.
The Solight Design, Inc. makes rechargeable solar lanterns, invented by Alice Min Soo Chun.
Luci (lantern) is a LED rechargeable lantern powered by sunlight. The device is inflatable, collapsible, and waterproof, and comprises 10 LED white lights with several settings. The solar-powered artifact became part of a joint campaign with Direct Energy to provide access to lighting to various international rural areas that lack access to electricity.
Light poverty is the state or condition in which people or communities lack artificial or electric light after sunset. This originates from many social and economic reasons, including inability to afford efficient lighting. Light poverty may also occur when a country's national grid has not electrified rural areas requiring light. As of 2019, 1.1 billion people do not have access to light, and this has many social and economic consequences, such as children being unable to study and rural markets and businesses being unable to operate due to the lack of visibility.