In a statement, Harish attributed the award to the collective work of his team at SELCO. Harish Hande was trained in energy engineering with a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts and during a visit to Dominican Republic, he was inspired by the idea of decentralised approach in the spread of solar application using small scale, stand alone installations instead of large centralised thermal stations for the poor living in remote villages. Returning to India, he lived with villagers to get a hang of their situation in diffusing a technology.
In the year 1995 Hande established SELCO in Bangalore where solar PV lighting systems, water heating systems and stoves were offered to meet the needs of the rural poor.
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