Moving up the energy ladder — how can we amplify electricity access?
One of our closest and longest standing clients, Ashden, held their annual international conference this week, looking at the world of sustainable energy solutions. As part of their industry leading Ashden Awards programme, they give a platform for each of the amazing winners to talk about what they do. There are also panel discussions featuring the winners and others from the industry.
You can see the Twitter stream and highlights here and a few of our thoughts from the day below.
You can see case studies of all the winner’s projects on the Ashden website, but a few themes that stuck out for us:
- Many social enterprises are longer term solutions to what charities have been trying to do for a long time. Although they are often reliant on existing charity / NGO networks for distribution.
- Social enterprises are way ahead of other markets and industries in having women leaders and supporting women across the world through their business models — often using existing groups as sales agents, distribution networks and post purchase customer support.
- People in the developing world want to charge their mobile phone just as much as we do.
- The 1 billion people without electricity now, could have their entire energy infrastructure built from the ground up using solar as the primary source. They wouldn’t have to retro-fit anything. Up for much debate and many in these markets don’t want to have what they see as a ‘2nd class’ solution compared to grid power.
Panel: How can people climb the energy ladder, faster?
Hosted expertly by journalist Dame Jenni Murray — a few thoughts and quotes from the panel:
Patrick Walsh, Founder & CEO of Greenlight Planet
Many people say, “Just copy the mobile phone distribution model!” — doesn’t work for solar as it is an improvement on existing models (ie Kerosene lamps), rather than a complete step change like the mobile phone.
Pay as you go models are going to unlock significant adoption for solar across the world.
“It doesn’t make sense for people living in off grid markets to be buying the same phones, televisions etc as someone in London”
Kat Harrison, Associate Director of Impact at Acumen
Solar lights save people money and allow them to spend it on better food, education and agriculture equipment.
Kerosene lamps are hugely polluting and dangerous. Combined, all the Kerosene lamps in the world have the same carbon footprint as a European country and represent a significant danger to health and property.
Some are defining the energy ladder as a staircase — it’s more about building foundations and then levels that you can stack on top of one another. We should be looking at how to make some of those steps shallower.
Ajaita Shah, Founder & CEO of Frontier Markets
It’s not that customers aren’t ready for the next thing in solar — it’s easy to demonstrate the benefits of a lantern, and once they start to have confidence in that then they want to move onto the next step.
The big risk for adoption is about knowing where the maintenance costs are going to be.
A learning — Frontier Markets used to say that solar couldn’t power a TV. The customer would then plug their TV in anyway, the system would turn it on for 3 seconds and then break. The customer then thought that system was dodgy and the supplier was lying to them. Now they don’t say that their solar products can’t power your TV, they explain that it will power a TV for 3 seconds or a light for 20 hours. The choice is down to the user and customers don’t get suspicious about the technology or think that the supplier is a liar if they do plug it in anyway.
Lais Lona, Business Development Africa at SunFunder
Customers are now coming with better inquiries and knowledge of finance. Structured asset financing is the area of growth for SunFunder and this is demonstrative of the move of many people up the energy ladder.
Andrew Reicher, Business Angel Investor in Energy Access
Investment business is like fashion — there are many passing fads. That being said, the big 4 pay as you go energy supply companies have raised $200 million in the past year. Probably not a fad!
Micro grids are currently out of fashion — but will likely come back for small businesses especially.
Most important factors:
- Last mile distribution — especially difficult in some communities
- Availability of debt — crucial in allowing the pay as you go models of the new suppliers and others to grow
Leapfrogging will happen i.e. the majority of off grid communities will avoid the single grid model altogether. $30k / connection vs $8 electricity supplies that can be paid in installments.
Some more views from across the panel:
Big question about whether African and Indian governments should invest in ‘The Grid’, following the Western model or distributed energy supplies such as personal solar or mini grids.
Entry level, solar products will continue to grow and provide scale without expensive subsidies and financed by individuals rather than NGOs or governments.
Will it be business or government that create the drive? Government of Benin was going to give everyone in the country a solar lantern before a recent election.
There is a $0.30–0.50 subsidy per litre of Kerosene in governments across Africa. This could easily be switched to deliver solar lamps for everyone in the continent. The challenge is a political one as the Kerosene industry is deeply invested in Africa. There are also challenges given the multiple uses that the liquid fuel can have rather than the specific uses solar has at the moment.
There is a perception by the African market though, that solar is 2nd class compared to ‘the grid’ which the developed world has.
Pay as you go for solar, is the same model that the majority of the developed world has been using for mobile phones — financing technology which they can’t afford up front.
Government vs market solutions to help drive adoption — there needs to be a mixture of the two to really drive adoption. It’s not just about money, it’s also about changing mindsets of policy makers and consumers.
Subsidies can really harm markets by driving out local distributers and not taking into account the long term maintenance cost of products.
African communities are not like European communities. In Europe you have collections of houses in villages — you can bring a single wire in and connect large numbers of people. In Africa, most people live in the middle of their land and therefore can’t justify the higher costs of connection given their minimal use. In the USA and Australia we are starting to see distributed energy systems that can power top end technology.
Heating, ventilation, heavy cooking and air conditioning can’t be provided by solar using existing technology. Everything else is within current capability.
In India they would rather own their own systems than be reliant on the government for maintenance and upkeep.
In order to bring the various government departments together in India, Frontier Markets brought in the Forestry Department as they link into all of the other stakeholder groups.
M-PESA and other SMS payment functions are core to allowing pay as you go solar and many other services to function. The UK’s Department for International Development have been investing and promoting this service and others, from the start and currently the government does little to tell people about it, despite the huge impact it has had in the continent.
Panel: Combining grid and off-grid electricity
Again, hosted by journalist Dame Jenni Murray, this panel looked to discuss the various benefits and challenges of each approach to sustainable energy solutions in the developing world.
Big progress has been made in creating traditional grid systems in the developing world, but the future looks to be in smaller, individual grids powered directly by solar power. Micro-grids are small scale energy supplies that follow a traditional model of charging the individual per KWh of usage.
Harrison Leaf, SteamaCo
Smart meter and data company that analyses energy consumption and collects payment for energy providers. They became a pure technology provider as they saw the gap in capability for energy suppliers to better understand their customers.
Why does connecting micro grids matter?
Firstly, prices:
$0.25 / KWH in the UK and Kenya for cities on the grid
$20 / KWH for kerosene lamps
$5 — $15 for solar lamps
$0.50 — $5 for micro grids — starting to compete
Secondly quality — you still can’t connect a water pump using solar.
Sarah Bieber, USAID Power Africa
Obama’s initiative to double power use in Africa by 2030. Aim is for 60 million new connections.
Aiming for 25 million connections off grid, with 35 million on the grid.
2/3 of off grid will come from personal systems, with the rest coming from micro-grids. The reality is that all approaches will need to be used to achieve their targets.
Challenge for them is lack of certainty about how governments and other organisations are going to develop these strategies in the future as without that they are unable to provide certainty to investors.
There’s a role for private and public sector to fund new connections.
To scale off grid connections of any kind you need to:
- Convince people it’s a good idea
- Create Pay as you go models
- Develop off grid appliances that run on solar panels
- Provide capital to businesses scale
- Address the policy hurdles in these countries
- Banks and vested interests are marginalising off grid solutions so need to better illustrate that it’s a viable solution
Charlie Miller, GOGLA and Power for All
Aim is to build consensus about how to get proper growth and solutions for distributed power in Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leon & Zimbabwe.
Need to define the vision for the future of energy — across houses, small businesses and entire communities.
Many tensions between state led utilities and on grid approaches against the de-centralised individual consumption and supply models we’re seeing come up with solar energy and products.
Reality is that off grid policy and planning is at the moment completely distinct from utility planning in their ministries. To really achieve scale, this needs to happen and serious mind shifts need to take place in order to allow that.
Nico Tyabji, Bloomberg New Energy Finance
Investors, governments, manufacturers etc all want to know what’s happening in the developing energy market and how it’s going to continue to scale. It’s seen as a commercial opportunity.
25 million product sales so far.
3 distinct markets with the most activity:
- Small scale solar devices — 5W and offer 1 or 2 lamps with phone charging. Majority of the 25 million products sold, is in this space with lots of competition and products.
- Solar home systems — majority of the investment recently due to heavier pricing and ongoing relationship with customers. Paid off fully for the consumer in a 2 years or less.
- Micro / mini grids — less commercial traction at the moment, with a handful of innovative companies pushing the envelope. Looks most like the traditional grid model, largely backed by government. 10–20 years time frame for implementation if ever.
Again, more needed from governments to understand how they’re going to push forward development, in order to achieve investment.
Some more views from across the panel:
Challenge for people on the ground is deciding whether to invest in off grid electricity if there’s a possibility that on grid power may arrive at some stage.
Average Revenue per User (ARPU) — key metric for energy companies when assessing how to deliver electricity to remote communities.
SteamaCo did a test where they moved away from charging / KWh to a flat fee / month. As long as you have $5 in an account at the start of the month you get unlimited energy — a much more flexible model for consumers. Through this approach, they increased ARPU by 40%. If nothing else this illustrates that consumers don’t really know what they want to or can afford to spend as yet.
No one will ever know what they’re willing to pay / KWh — but they will be able to say what they’d pay to run a TV or water pump for a month. Grids do not present their information in this way — there’s an opportunity here.
“Uncertainty is the biggest barrier”. Need an ongoing, constantly evaluated plan in each of these markets that combines pre-agreed frameworks for solutions with what customers and markets want.
Off grid solutions at the individual level, are largely independent of government interference, whereas mini-grids have much more exposure to regulated and traditional utility companies.
Consumers don’t have any particular alignment to an approach — they just want reliable, economical power.
A move from a large scale, low number of energy providers to many individuals making their own energy is a very difficult shift for governments and societies at large.
More voice is needed from community groups which represent end users. At the moment they even struggle to know how much governments or utility companies are paying for their electricity, let alone help inform the conversation about how best to proceed. At the moment, transparency in this whole area is limited.
Anything above individual solar products, needs a level of maintenance which is above average and traditionally this has not been well taken care of by communities or individuals.
A transparent approach to the Economics + Politics seemed to be the answer from the panel overall.
Well done to all involved in a great event — you can find out more about the work of Ashden at www.ashden.org
