http://africanenergy.com/which-battery-is-better-in-hot-environments-2/

Business models, finance and entrepreneurship

It is our impression for years there has been a disconnect between the financial savvy and the rest of the people working on this space. Of course none can argue against market driven solutions. But there are many issues that actually not allow so easily these markets to exists in the first place. Some locations and settings are so poor and remote that cannot sustain full private sector involvement so there is the need of subsidies for hardwarare through national debt. Lighting solutions will continue to do fantastic work reaching millions, but there are enormous needs to provide flexible grid like services to anyone. And that’s probably the fairest aspiration that anyone living in the communication era can aspire.

Solid data for modeling and accountability

This brings us to big gaps on data to sustain modeling and ensure correction measurements in investments and programs to improve accountability. From work at the SEL lab we know that connection costs through grid extensions come many times over 1000 usd per connection, where as a 500Wh/day 24h service based on battery, pv generation and automated management can be easily deployed under that amount. However, much of the information available is anecdotal, and developers of larger systems have high soft costs to overcome relatively new technologies, key human resources needs and challenging environments. Way more work is needed to share costs and to reduce these soft costs. If you want to collaborate on this, send us an email in the contact info session.

Engagement and Governance to not lose generations living the darkness

The key question is not the costs of the electrons but to the affordability of final services to end users. You see, there are many households at the bottom tiers that paying 10 usd/month for electric services represent 10% of their monthly income. It is fair enough that they have access to energy in quantity and whenever they want. So Governments and other institutions require taking a stand and start investing smartly. Practitioners willing to fail are highly needed in this industry. We echo some our fellow colleges that argue that more seed money needs to be given to entrepreneurs to fail more often whilst trying to sell energy services to the poorest people.

See more here

Ashden Awards 2014 recognize the effort of very innovative companies in developing countries

White House Finally Goes Solar; Obama Preaches Efficiency and Jobs at Wal-Mart
Why the Electrify Africa Act is vital to powering Africa

Modi in India to bring electricity to rural populations using solar.

It’s worth noting how the Mobile/IT revolution has been instrumental for us in providing a grid-like electric service with intermittent renewables. Our on-site servers run on processors designed for mobile phones – low cost, low power, less heat. The IT hardware costs are negligible with the addition of these platforms, but the flexibility we can bring with our hosted software is huge. We provide customer service by leveraging the existing mobile network infrastructure, with mobile handsets as the interface between customers and the operators. Wireless LAN’s support our mobile app that local agents use for payment collection, management and local overrides. Our enterprise management system also uses the mobile network infrastructure for communicating with the sites.

Without these mobile computing and communications platforms, it would not have been possible for us to deploy and operate sustainable electric services in the regions and communities that we are in. And we’re extremely happy and excited to have been given this chance to participate and showcase our solutions.

More on the announcement and the challenge here – http://www.vodafone-us.com/wireless-innovation-project/current-competition/2013-finalists/