ANOTHER innovative energy solution is being introduced in the Philippines, as a 25-year-old Filipina-Chinese scientist brought home her invention of solar network for energy education and employment (Solar N3E) that she won at the 2017 Geneva Challenge.
Anne Brigitte Lim won at United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network Youth Prize in the 2017 Geneva Challenge competition. She wants to impart her Solar N3E invention to the public—specifically to the youth—and to promote employment in the country.
Lim is among the 56 Filipino scholars sponsored and sent by the United States Agency for International Development to the US to her master’s degree in Research.
She said, “My idea is to train people, get them involved and certified as solar installers and give them formal employment.”
“Solar energy here in the Philippines is growing and we need people who will install the solar equipment. There is a growing job market that needs that specific skill, and the training we will give is how to maintain the solar system in your barangay or learn how to use the solar lighting kit. Solar N3E focuses on the formal job market,” she added.
Lim was a 2017 scholar graduate from Arizona State University with a Professional Science master’s degree in Solar Energy Engineering and Commercialization.
She said “we have to think of ways to sustain our lifestyles. Renewable energy is very promising because it will be virtually useful almost forever—maybe like 100 million years. This is good enough for our lifetime, and maybe three generations down.”
“That’s what motivates me because I’ve been through several brownouts and that’s uncomfortable. We need to act now and make sure that our future is energy secure,” she added.
Lim created Solar N3E with three other Filipino colleagues.
Solar N3E is a social enterprise that integrates research, training and networking to expand employment opportunities in the country through the growing solar-power industry.
Lim returned to the country around December 2017. She now works for a Manila-based Japanese solar company. As part of its business development unit, she applies her technical knowledge to design strategies to expand the solar industry in the Philippines.
Lim is now joined by her former Geneva challenge teammate who works with the Department of Social Welfare and Development to promote her Solar N3E project. They are seeking funding for the project from the government through the Sustainable Livelihood Program.