Renewables & Environment - Toronto, Ontario, Canada
EmPowerEQ enables individuals living in energy poor regions in Africa to generate their own electricity, through a device designed to fit their daily routines. Our mission is to empower the end users, including women and children, by reducing the time spent on water collection and allowing them to focus their time and energy on other tasks such as education and economic development. EmPowerEQ strives to create innovations to mitigate the state of energy poverty. Some of the largest issues Africa faces today include water pollution, water accessibility, and affordable electricity. These issues have a common solution - improved access to water and electricity. The energy quencher utilizes the energy in the movement of a rotating object, commonly used in rural areas for water collection, to generate electricity in an environmentally friendly manner with zero carbon-emissions. Energy is stored to be later used as a means of basic lighting, water purification, heating, cooking, and several other applications. The energy is provided by the consumer, for the consumer, thus creating customer independence that is not available with alternate sustainable energy solutions. EmPowerEQ believes that traditional sources of energy may be replaced by more sustainable methods through the use of our product, which would be both feasible and environmentally beneficial to countries such as Malawi. Instead of selling electricity, we sell the means to generate electricity. Access to electricity empowers and educates the consumers and helps them realize the availability and importance of energy. Our plan of action, through careful research of our customers' daily lives, is to provide a small scale market-based solution to the current energy problem in Malawi. We cultivated a device that integrates into the livelihood of our customers to ensure that they can meet their energy requirements, but also use our product without changing their routine.