UC Berkeley Sensors Takes Top Prize in Vodafone Innovation Project

A path breaking model of “stove use monitoring system” (SUMS) developed by UC Berkeley was awarded a first prize of $300,000 in the 2010 Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project. The Foundation selects three wireless projects,with the potential to save lives and solve critical global challenges. The winners were selected from more than 100 qualified applications from universities and NGOs from across the United States of America.

The "100 Million Stoves" device is a simple wireless SUMS,  powered with the excess heat of the stove, which can be attached to the millions of new low-emission stoves being used in developing regions. The device will record usage data and send them to a dedicated reader carried by someone in the village making a monthly walk through. The cumulated data will then be uploaded via cell phone to a central database for systematic processing. The low-cost technology will allow the assessment of household energy programs, enable feedback from users, and provide transparent verification of carbon credits.

According to Kirk. R. Smith, Professor of Global Environmental Health, UC Berkeley, "The wireless SUMS can be deployed in a careful sub-sample across millions of households in a statistically valid manner. Unlike household visits, the monitors provide unique and valuable information that can be scaled to millions."

The "100 Million Stoves" team consists of Smith's research group, three small Berkeley companies — BioLite, Electronically Monitoring Ecosystems, and Berkeley Air Monitoring Group — and the Department of Environmental Health Engineering at Sri Ramachandra University in Chennai, India. Together they have built prototypes of the wireless SUMS, and the Vodafone award will help bring the project to the next stage of implementation and scale. The team plans to use the device in trials and its initial application will be in India as part of the country's National Biomass Cook-stoves Initiative.

"Soon it will be ready for use by groups around the world wishing to validate carbon credits for stove programs on the international carbon market. In addition, it can also serve as the basis for other devices to remotely and efficiently monitor the use and effectiveness of household health and energy interventions for research, program evaluation, and user feedback.", says Professor Smith.