By AMY YEE. September 2, 2010. New York Times

BANGALORE, INDIA — As dusk falls, the sound of children singing fills the air at the SOS Tibetan Children’s Village in Bylakuppe, five hours’ drive from Bangalore in southern India. Night descends on the tidy, stone-paved school campus carved out of the lush jungle.

But darkness is dispelled when 20 solar-powered street lights on the campus begin to glow with a steady white light. Thirty dormitories set among groves of coconut palm trees are also equipped with solar lights — as is a nearby Buddhist monastery. They allow 1,000 children to study, eat and play during evening power cuts that frequently disrupt the refugee-village school’s electricity supply.

Selco, a solar energy company, installed the lights in 2003. Since its founding in 1995, Selco, based in Bangalore, India’s technology hub, has provided 100,000 homes with solar lighting systems, mostly in the surrounding state of Karnataka.  In the nearby village of Doddhosur, about 30 minutes’ drive from the Tibetan school, D.S. Shivanna, a farmer, has light bulbs in five rooms of his home that are powered by a rooftop solar panel set up by Selco last year. READ MORE…