11-year-old Vedant Thaker used to go to his paternal village in Tintoi, Gujarat to spend his summer and Diwali holidays. When he saw that the poor children in the village could not read at night because the village had no electricity, he decided to bring a change to their lives. That’s a big dream to realize at the age of 11 for Vedant, who is a 6 grade student in Mumbai’s Shantinagar High School.
“It hurts to see that my friends cannot study after dark. I am also worried about how people in the village cook when there is no electricity. There is a risk of them getting hurt and I want to change that,” Vedant told The Better India
Vedant thought of a way he could provide free electricity to the people of his country and especially the kids in his paternal village.
In 2014, when his father’s 1-year-old laptop battery stopped working, inquisitive to know what’s inside, Vedant opened the battery to find out that only 1 of the 6 cylindrical lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells was dysfunctional. This was the reason why the laptop battery had stopped working. That battery could not get the power supply due to that one dysfunctional cell. (A battery usually consists 6-8 cylindrical lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells.)
Vedant installed one of the functional cells in a non-working CFL inverter lamp which instantly lit up like nothing was ever wrong with it. This was just the beginning of his invention. He further worked on it and developed a functional light source from scratch.
His father, Dhiren Thaker is a computer engineer by profession and has a keen interest in electronics that’s where Vedant got his interest for everything electronics too and could find many electronic devices and parts at home to experiment with.
As his village had no charging sources, he thought of connecting the device to a solar panel which his father bought him from a scrap store. Vedant added a diode to the solar light’s circuit so that there is no reverse current flow. And that is how an 11-year-old promises to bring light and into many lives. Vedant has a provisional patent for the solar power light.
Vedant’s father, Dhiren explained the entire process. 
“Even though such batteries cannot be used anymore for laptops, they still have a lot of residual charge left. This residual power can be used to light up lives of children living in extreme rural areas. The cost will also be small as the battery, which is the heart of this system, comes without any cost.”
Vedant started innovating at the age of 6 that’s when he first made a sound producing device. At 7, he constructed an electronic toy boat made from scrap. A remote operated boat at 11 and his latest invention is a remote operated door unlocking system. All of this without any additional studies or any additional reading!
Vedant wants to become an engineer when he grows up and wants to develop a free power source for the people of his country.
“He always seemed to understand things which are not easy for other children of his age to understand. Like how to connect cells and the way their positive and negative polarities work. He often takes me to the scrap shop and wants to purchase things with which he can create new products. He also has a good understanding about safety and is always careful about what should be touched with bare hands. Honestly, I can say that he was born with this knowledge,” Vedant’s proud father says about his son.
We wish more power to Vedant and hope he fulfills his dream.
News Source: The Better India
