SunCast, SolarPlaza, & Sigora International
It started with a voicemail.
Being the knowledge-hungry recent-grad that I am, like many millennials these days, I spend less time listening to music and more time indulging in podcasts. Along with The Energy Gang, The Interchange, Grid Geeks, and The Energy Transition Show, I often look to Nico Johnson’s SunCast to clean my ears with the latest news in energy, clean-tech, and the environment.
In early June, I hopped onto the stationary bike and pressed play on SunCast’s latest episode. Three minutes and 37 seconds in, I almost fell off the bike when I heard the word “Miami.” Something to do with renewable energy that wasn’t in San Francisco, but in Miami, Florida!? I pressed the 30 second rewind button on my overcast app and did an audio double-take: “It’s not too late to get your ticket to the SolarPlaza Unlocking Solar Capital-LATAM (USC-LATAM) event coming up in Miami, in June.” Nico, unknowingly, continued to reel me in by sharing that the conference would be “a great place to meet folks” and “learn how and where investors are looking at the Latin American solar market.”
In other words, I had to attend.
I left Nico a voicemail on his SunCast website inquiring about opportunities to volunteer at the event in exchange for a ticket to the conference. A few days later, Nico connected me with Adriaan of SolarPlaza who warmly accepted my request to attend and volunteer.
Over the course of the two day conference, the conversations I had with my passionate new friends at SolarPlaza and the presentations I attended on energy access, climate solutions, and impressive solar economics fortified my optimism in this permeating reality:
we have the technology, intellectual capacity, finances, and economics to tackle climate change and treat it as Jigar Shah has dubbed it: the biggest wealth-creation opportunity of our time.
That is: the somewhat counter-intuitive duality that climate change, while perilous to thousands of species, coastal inhabitants, agriculture, and international stability, also provides the opportunity to reform our archaic (fossil fuels are, indeed, hundreds of millions of years old) energy systems from volatile commodity-based pricing to stable, independently owned renewable systems, create cleaner jobs and cleaner air, and bring developing economies and frontier communities out of the biomass-fueled smoke and into the sun.
I wont go into the depressing details of how our fellow global citizens living in the poorest nations and earning the lowest incomes pay the most for energy. If you want to pick up a book that depicts, among many other important climate and energy topics, the truth about this energy-injustice, I suggest reading Jigar Shah’s Creating Climate Wealth, Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope’s Climate of Hope, or Travis Bradford’s Solar Revolution. What I will do is enlighten the readers of this post with information about a company that I became familiar with at USC-LATAM that’s attacking the issue of energy access from all angles of the complicated terrain it rests upon.
That was Andy Bindea’s (founder and CEO of Sigora International) response when asked if charging residents of northwest Haiti for renewable electricity would be a financial burden, since their previous absence of grid-connectedness prevented them from having to pay a monthly electric bill at all. To put that price into perspective, average electricity rates in the United States for May 2017 were 10.37 cents/kWh. Cents. Not dollars.
A technology development company based in San Francisco, Sigora International is one of the early players attacking energy access and electrification in developing nations, or “frontier markets.” Currently, 1.3 billion people, which is 18% of the global population, do not have access to electricity, and many more only have access to unreliable, expensively-imported diesel-powered electricity.
Despite the setbacks that come with attracting investment for electricity infrastructure in developing nations, some of which are being overcome by investments by Developing World Markets, Microsoft Affordable Access Initiative, European Development Finance Institutions, and Inter-American Investment Corporation, on multiple occasions I’ve heard Andy reiterate the sobering fact that addressing the problem of electrification already has a simple, implementable solution, a model that utilities have used since their conception:
A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is a measure of energy production or usage. It is the measure of power (kW) produced or used over an hour: thus the kilowatt-hour
While simply ‘making and selling kWhs’ is a generalization of the detailed process that goes into electrifying a community, Sigora International’s comprehensive business and technology plan has crafted a model that can successfully address this problem in northwest Haiti, and later scale to electrify hundreds of millions of people. Sigora’s current goal is to power 2 million people by 2025 using their proprietary smart-metering technology and micro-utility model (owning and operating micro-grids to serve densely-populated communities) and simultaneously empower local entrepreneurs to generate and sell their own clean electricity to the local community.
A micro-grid is an interconnected grid of distributed energy resources (smaller solar systems or generators), or ‘centralized’ generation at the local level
A micro-utility is an enterprise that produces energy (kWh) and sells energy (kWh), just like a utility, but for smaller communities
The components of Sigora International:
Sigora Micro-Utility (currently in NW Haiti)
- Interconnected clean-energy micro-grids
- Customers connect to a smart meter for a $15 fee
- Customers prepay for their desired electricity usage either by phone, online, or by cash at local vendors
Proprietary Smart Meter Technology
- Cloud-connected: technical (load, production) and financial data of the grid can be monitored remotely, enabling quick response times if issues arise
- Anti-theft capabilities: can identify theft attempts and prevent illegal connections from pulling electricity from the micro-grid (while only 25% of Haiti’s population is grid-connected, 50% of those connected are connected illegally (stolen power)).
- Wi-fi distribution: meters have wi-fi access points to connect to town networks
- Demand-control for pre-paid customers
Exclusive Service Areas
- 50-year exclusive concession with Haitian government to supply electricity in Mole St. Nicholas, Mare Rouge, and Cote De Fer
- 25-year exclusive concession for Bombardopolis and Jean Rabel
Electrification goals:
- Phase 1: 136,000 people in NW Haiti by 2017; 3,500 KW of peak wind and solar electricity
Peak capacity is the maximum power output that a wind turbine or solar system can generate at a point in time (usually at times of high solar insolation or optimal wind conditions.) Sigora’s production infrastructure contains batteries to store excess production for nighttime use, and ice storage to create ice with excess wind output, of which will also be sold for a profit
- Phase 2: 1 million people by 2020 in 28 Haitian cities; 42,000 KW (42 MW)
- Phase 3: 2 million people by 2025, 100,000 KW (100 MW)
- Pilot project in Kaanja, Zambia, to electrify 1200 people
To achieve the International Energy Agency’s Energy For All case, by 2030, 36% additional power capacity needed to electrify those without energy access will come from micro-grids. So the ultimate goal for energy-access providers will be to electrify 468 million people (36% of the 1.3 billion that are densely populated enough to be connected to a micro-grid)
Funding and Capital
At the USC-LATAM conference, when speaking on a panel with Haitian government officials Evenson Calixte and Nicolas Allien who handle the electricity sector, Andy caught everyone’s attention when he said,
Thankfully, some investors recognize this disparity between perceived and actual risk, and Sigora International has been able to secure over 5 million dollars in investments so far, with most going to deployment and infrastructure and some going to technology development:
- Sigora International is funded by equity, angel investors, debt, and grants
- ElectriFI of the Association of European Development Finance Institutions awarded Sigora $ 2.5 million in its first round of funding
- Microsoft Affordable Access Initiative recently awarded a grant to Sigora International to bring energy access and connectivity to an area that needs it most
- Due diligence with debt providers is in process to finance both phase I in Haiti and Zambia’s micro-utility
Sigora’s scalable model and plan to electrify frontier communities with clean energy for those who need it most, and for those who feel the risks of climate change the most, is a truly great example of altruistic entrepreneurship. I hope to learn all I can from Sigora International and its successes so that within the next five years, I can return home to South Africa and help my friends living in townships like Imizamo Yethu establish micro-grids and micro-utilities so they, too, can enjoy clean, reliable, affordable access to electricity, along with the revenue that will flow from making kilowatt-hours and selling kilowatt-hours.
As Travis Bradford in his book Solar Revolution said,
“While some of the wealth effects to be expected from an increasingly solar economy are nonmeasurable, they will clearly include economic and social growth similar to what resulted from harnessing fossil fuels in the 18th and 19th centuries and again from the development of the electricity grid in the 20th century. Because the next paradigm shift — the move to solar energy — will extend to many more people than the current energy infrastructure, it will contribute even more broadly to human prosperity. Benefits to the industrialized world will include increased energy security and stability, cleaner air and water, cheaper electricity, more jobs, and a truly sustainable infrastructure. In the developing world, photovoltaics will do much to help billions of people help themselves out of poverty.”
Luckily enough for all of us, shift happens.
Thanks for reading my medium post. I’m very excited to keep searching for career opportunities in the renewables and electrification space; but for now, I’ll get back to researching the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification on coral reef ecosystems. Those guys need our attention, too!
~The grass is always greener on an environmentalist’s side~
