INTASAVE Energy believe they have a model that will provide clean, reliable and affordable electricity to off-grid communities in developing regions, where larger solar installations are simply not viable. By Arran de Moubray, Head of Renewable Energy, INTASAVE Energy.

A major problem for many small and remote communities in Africa and across the globe is the ability to access reliable and/or affordable electricity. According to the World Bank, only 23 percent of the Kenyan population has direct access to electricity as the country's national grid is not only unreliable, but it is also extremely expensive to buy into. What's more, in 2010 only five percent, or about 1.7 million, of the 34 million Kenyans in rural areas had access to any form of energy at all. 

Solar energy has long been a solution for bringing electricity to rural areas, with various projects installed in the last few years with varying degrees of success. However, the main difficulty has always been finding a model that is affordable, easy to maintain and scalable to meet the growing energy needs of these rural communities as they develop.

With this in mind, we at INTASAVE Energy believe we have the solution to this problem, by introducing a model that will provide clean, reliable and affordable electricity to off-grid communities in developing regions, where larger solar installations are simply not viable.

Say it with a SONG

INTASAVE Energy has developed its Solar Nano-Grid (SONG) to not only provide a "quick fix" for immediate electricity needs but also deliver a long-term sustainable, scalable and affordable solution that allows communities to grow their energy usage at their own pace.

Many villages in Sub-Saharan Africa are located in remote areas, with small independent communities of around 50-100 houses in reasonably close proximity. The standard solar home systems (SHS) that are available are standalone and limited to supplying a fixed amount of energy to one single consumer household. And this is where our solution differs. Rather than relying on having solar panels on each household, a single SONG can supply an entire community of around 50 households from one central hub at 20Wp per household - enough to power three light bulbs and a phone charger, for example.

The solar hub contains traditional lead-acid cells that store the power collected from the solar panels. Household energy is then supplied via portable battery packs that are housed in the central hub. These battery packs, a cutting-edge design using recycled lithium-ion batteries, a unique battery management system and microcontroller developed for use in the field, can be taken to be used in homes each night and returned for re-charging in the morning.

This "˜hub' model also enables another crucial aspect of the SONGs model "“ the provision of collective community power. Excess power generated at the central location can be effectively utilised elsewhere, meeting the communities' commercial, social or agro-industrial needs and any other micro-enterprises they may be involved in, including water pumps, refrigeration units and egg incubators, and even for commercial micro-enterprises such as hair salons and mobile phone charging businesses.

This community aspect is especially powerful, far outweighing alternative models of solar energy for alleviating problems associated with poverty and a lack of access to electricity. For example, any SHS excess power generated from bright sunshine or long hours of sunlight cannot be used elsewhere, and is therefore entirely wasted. What's more, a SHS cannot serve an entire community by supporting small-scale economic activities that require power because it is built to serve individual households rather than the community as a whole.

The SONG system architecture is also modular, which means it can easily be extended over time in keeping with the growing aspirations and needs of the community or individual households. What's more, new photovoltaic (PV) panels can be installed and the existing nano-grids can then be interconnected to form a larger, more powerful system, or be connected to other new grids.

By providing clean energy this way, SONGs can improve quality of life, empower women, improve health, increase children's educational attainment, and boost the local economy.

Cost savings and quality of life benefits

SONGs provide energy at very competitive costs compared to the kerosene or diesel equivalents and compared to SHS solutions. Other alternatives such as minigrids (systems of between 50kW and 1MW) and micro-grids (5kW to 50kW) have high up-front costs. This means they are out of the reach of the majority of the small remote communities SONGs are targeting. In addition to these cost savings, households benefit from numerous health, environmental and educational factors.

To date many households in these communities have relied on kerosene and diesel for the energy required to run their enterprises or as the fuel in lamps for lighting, which is proven to be extremely harmful to their health and wellbeing. For example, children are often forced to do their homework by kerosene lamp.

As a result, one of the top reasons for clinic visits is fume inhalation or fumes affecting eyes. By using SONGs, communities can eliminate their exposure to health risks to lungs and eyes, reducing recorded respiratory disorders and deaths associated with indoor air pollution.

With energy from the SONGs available for community activities, this also means that maternal health can be improved, owing to the reduced physical labour demands caused by new practices such as water pumping, corn-husking and maize-milling. What's more, communities are now able to use refrigeration to store medicine, vaccines and milk for themselves "“ something that until now had not been possible.

In terms of education, children from electrified households are able to gain an average of two additional years of "˜educational achievement' by comparison to those from non-electrified households. Households can also benefit from far greater access to radio, television, ICT and mobile telephones.



Our unique proposition

INTASAVE Energy works closely with the Energy and Power Group (EPG) of the University of Oxford, Loughborough University and the United International University Bangladesh to design SONGs to most effectively meet the needs of communities in Kenya and other emerging markets and developing countries. One of the core innovations behind SONGs is ionQube technology, developed in tandem with the EPG at Oxford, which enables the portable battery packs used in SONGs.

Lithium-ion cells are the most common type of rechargeable battery used in consumer electronics today. Their ubiquity is due to the fact that not only do they possess high energy density but they also have a slow loss of charge when not in use, making them ideal for portable devices, with two to three times the energy storage capacity of their lead acid battery equivalent. However, the batteries themselves rarely reach the end of their full lifespan. Usually the devices they are used in stop being able to draw power even though usable energy remains in the cell. This can be caused by hardware limitations or even by faulty software, but what happens to these batteries when they outlive their usefulness?

Today, these batteries are usually discarded or recycled, but around 50 percent of waste Lithium-ion batteries are actually still usable. The ionQube is a solution that allows industry standard 18650 lithium-ion batteries to be "˜upcycled' into a rechargeable and reusable power source that can be used for low carbon energy storage. The ionQube design isolates the useful cells and recombines them into the ionQube.

As the ionQube is chemistry agnostic, it can accept any Lithium-ion battery and because it has cell-level management it can easily combine cells of varying capacities where traditional battery packs cannot. In addition, for the first installation in Kenya, each ionQube is equipped with a small microcontroller, which acts as the battery pack's "˜brain'. The microcontroller is used to detect the type of battery installed and is able to manage each one individually to extend the life of the battery pack as a whole.

The electronics of the ionQube are designed to be long lasting, with the battery cells replaceable by the user. Therefore, not only do users avoid having to pay large amounts of money to replace their entire system, it is entirely scalable so that multiple ionQubes can be connected together to increase both capacity and power. In addition to battery management, the microcontroller also saves data on how the ionQube is being used.

The data from each SONG solar-hub is then shared via a GSM uplink. This information is then used by the SONG team to determine how many ionQubes are needed in certain situations "“ for example understanding the relationship between the number of people in a household to the number of ionQubes needed to fulfil their energy needs. This intelligent understanding of end user profiles and consumer behaviour allows INTASAVE to extend the opportunities for system optimisation and to better specify the system requirements for future rollouts.

Accurate usage data allows scheduling of energy and power to most efficiently use the solar panels and hub batteries to provide the energy and power required. In addition, it either validates or disproves information gathered through community consultations, ensuring that SONG deployments are built on tried and tested developments rather than assumptions based on consultation results. At the battery level, INTASAVE can also ensure the batteries are matched to the usage patterns they will be subjected to in the field, delivering optimal performance in each pack.

Lemolo B and Echareria in Kenya "“ these are just the beginning

Kenya has been chosen as the starting point in Africa for implementing the SONG programme due to its solar conditions, with an average of 5kWh/m²/day available throughout the country. The first SONGs deployments are currently taking place in Lemolo B, a community of approximately 250 people, and in Echareria, as well as other communities in Africa, South America and eventually, the rest of the world.

Projects like our SONGs in Kenya will bring power and new business opportunities to remote communities across the world. Linking clusters of about 50 families in rural communities to small-scale, communal solar power not only delivers power to households and communities -  it lifts people out of poverty.  The INTASAVE Energy team strongly believes that it is through the combination of new technologies and creative minds that we can help bring clean, sustainable electricity to any community around the world.