Study of the Lighting Sources of Street Vendors in Kerala and Their Willingness to Switch to Solar Lanterns

This paper attempts to assess solar power as an alternate power source for street vendors in the Kerala, India. The street vendors in India represent about 3% of the total non agricultural population in India. Provision of a clean and cheap source of lighting for them is important. Traditionally they use kerosene or take the aid of the street light. This paper attempts to find out the feasibility and readiness of the street vendors to accept an alternate source of lighting and particularly on solar lantern. Also this study attempts to find out the various characteristics and parameters on lighting sources of street vendors. In this paper, the willingness of the street vendors to switch to an alternate source is also explored through a questionnaire based survey. The conclusive observations indicate that the solar lanterns are very feasible alternative source of lighting for the street vendors; and they have exhibited willingness to shift over to the solar lanterns.