Off-Grid Solar, Part 1 -
switch on

For millions of off-grid citizens and villages, building their own solar power system may be the fastest way to get electricity. Dr. Scott Tinker visits a houseboat family in Vietnam, a Maasai family in Kenya, the Arhuaco tribe in remote Colombia, solar nonprofits and innovative start-ups to learn what it takes to plan, fund and build solar far off the beaten path.

Duration: 26 minutes and 46 seconds

Episode Number: 105

No future air times were found for this episode.

About Switch On:

Join Dr.

Scott Tinker on an unexpected journey -- in turns heartwarming, funny, eye-opening and unsettling to understand the benefits and challenges of bringing energy to more than 3 billion citizens of the developing world.

In this spectacular 6-part series, he'll cross Nepal with an environmental health scientist, studying people's transition from the most dangerous cooking fuel, killing millions a year, to the safest; visit Ethiopia's huge new hydroelectric dam and Kenya's largest slum, to see how Africa will power its people; venture into the ports and coal mines that support a growing Vietnam; and install a solar microgrid to bring electricity, for the first time ever, to the Arhuaco people of Colombia.