IEEE Smart Village Launches SunBlazer IV and Smart Portable Battery Kits: Empowering Remote Communities

IEEE Smart Village (ISV) developed the first-generation SunBlazer in 2010 as a mobile charging station for portable battery kits (PBKs). These kits enabled people in remote villages to provide power for basic lighting, cell-phone charging, and small appliances. Now, 10 years and three design iterations later, ISV demonstrates its continuing penchant for innovation with the SunBlazer IV and Smart PBK technology, developed as more versatile options for the on-going mission to empower off-grid communities around the world. This fourth-generation equipment is lightweight, modular, rugged, easy to transport and install, and adaptable to a multitude of uses. The kit includes a controller and battery charger in a selfcontained shipping container, which, along with the simplified expandable solar panel with an A-frame design, makes for easier setup in remote areas. The modular design of the SunBlazer IV (Figure 1) allows users to raise the peak power from 1.5 kWp, the peak power of a three solar-panel base system, to up to 3.7 kWp by extending the A-frame solar panel array. Larger arrays can be created by cascading systems together.