Solar Lighting by mobile phone payments - this is Africa today

But one company hopes to change all that, using the pay-as-you-go model developed by the cell phone industry to make solar lighting and phone charging accessible to emerging markets across the Globe.

The 2.5w system features a solar panel, an LED light, adapters for most cellular phones, and an IndiGo box with battery.

Users simply add credit to the box using top up codes sent to their cell phone&mdah;without which the system does not generate electricity.

"What we've found is that people might start off with a 2.5W system, but want more to run a TV or something," Bransfield-Garth said. "So we not only have new customers, we have scale-ups too."

source: treehugger.com