Families who tested GL01 shared invaluable feedback on what needed improving before we could launch GravityLight. These insights have driven the development of GL02 over the past 18 months.

Working with organisations and individuals across 26 different countries; a breadth that would give us insights into a range of communities and climates, we were able to trial over 1300 GravityLight units with off-grid households to prove the concept and understand its potential.

Not only did the crowd-funding dramatically change the scale of our intended production run, it also gave us the opportunity to further refine the product before sending to crowdfunders and testing around the world.

In November 2012, with a working prototype in hand, the next step was raising funds to product 1000 units to test the GravityLight concept with households reliant on kerosene for light. Martin and Jim looked to the crowd for support...

In 2009, therefore, an award-winning design consultancy was approached by SolarAid, a UK charity with a mission to eradicate kerosene lamps. The team at SolarAid wanted to develop an extremely low-cost solar light, in order to reach off-grid families living on less than $3 a day. 

Designers Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves took on the challenge