Batteries and photovoltaics are critical technologies for enabling electrical power for the rural areas in developing countries. The solar PV systems with battery storage are considered the only hope for almost 2 billion people without access to electricity. These forgotten people need electricity for improved basic life necessities such as reading at night, refrigerating food, or charging cell phones for communication.

Solar Hope (www.solar-hope.org) is a unique, non-profit organization that has accomplished over 120 solar PV installations in Africa and South America since 2010. The PV installations were installed for schools, hospitals, orphanages, and for water pumping for whole villages. The volunteers for the organization are the students from the Electrical Engineering and Renewable Energy Engineering program at the Oregon Institute of Technology. A unique concept involves PV system design in classroom and implementation in the field. Through Solar Hope, the students participate in the design, component build, and training, prior to joining the expeditions to remote areas of Africa. Solar Hope has made a huge impact so far by affecting with the installations in the excess of 300,000 people, mostly children. The efforts by Solar Hope also save lives by enabling better treatment of patients in the hospitals and by preventing fires from burning fossil fuels inside.

Solar Hope requires help from the electrochemical community in form of component donations (e.g., batteries, Solar PV panels, charge controllers, inverters, etc.) as well as monetary contributions to enable the use of electrochemical technologies in developing countries and help improve lives of millions.