Rapidly growing solar installer also provides clean cooking
2008 Outstanding Achievement Award
Grameen Shakti won a first prize Ashden Award in 2006 for providing photovoltaic (PV) solar-home-systems through affordable loans to 65,000 households in Bangladesh. Its work has expanded rapidly and diversified. With 2,000 staff now operating from 400 local offices, a total of 150,000 solar-home-systems have been installed. In the past two years Grameen Shakti has also sold 14,000 cheap, efficient cooking stoves and 3,000 biogas plants. Trained technicians, mostly women, manufacture components in 20 technology centres, and install and service systems. Some of these technicians have become independent entrepreneurs. Grameen Shakti aims to have provided a million solar-home-systems, 10 million improved stoves, and half a million biogas plants by 2015.