Renewable Energy: ‘Swarm-electrification could Be a Game-changer’
The electrification rate across Sub-Saharan Africa remains way too slow despite an observed willingness and ability to pay for better energy services. While there are many challenges to be addressed, one reason for the slow pace of rural electrification is related to the risks associated with inappropriate sizing of a standalone grid. Swarm-electrification could be the right answer in the many cases where future demand is highly uncertain.
The sizing problem
When visiting existing solar mini-grids in Africa, you often hear similar problems. The installation is either too big and not profitable, or too small resulting in unstable grids with frequent dropouts.
Attempts to recover from an oversized investment generally includes a range of demandstimulating initiatives requiring extra investments and hence lead to an even bigger risk exposure.
Correcting the size of a too small grid often leads to the replacement of already installed components and is typically as complicated as starting all-over.
While correctly forecasting the immediate short-term energy demand is not so difficult, forecasting the demand evolution on the mid-term is very complicated. It largely depends on the take-off of productive use cases which in turn depends on numerous factors that - for a large part - are not yet fully understood and still require further research. Therefore, despite the availability of numerous forecasting models, a correct forecast of the energy demand evolution remains one of the major risks that a solar mini-grid developer is facing.
The incertitude of future demand also leads many investors to require the presence of bankable anchor clients willing to purchase any surplus energy. All those elements lead to a sector that progresses at a very slow pace and that is focused around identifying rural areas with high growth potential, leaving many thousands of rural communities in the dark.
Demand-driven business model
But what would happen if a solution existed that would allow the industry to move away from the current building-ahead-ofdemand strategy? A solution of which the profitability would no longer be conditional to a strong demand-growth? Where the presence of anchor clients would no longer be required? A mini-grid architecture where extra capacity could simply be plugged in, not requiring scarce engineering skills nor the replacement of any of the already installed components?
Such game-changing demanddriven business models are now possible and announce themselves as the future for mini-grids in all those villages where demand evolution is highly uncertain.
FlexGrid, an easy replicable and rapid-scaleable 230V AC-grid
FlexGrid is a solar PV mini-grid system based on the award-winning Swarm Intelligence developed by the Swiss company PowerBlox. FlexGrid proposes a demanddriven approach towards rural electrification. They focus on underserved areas and villages that are typically overlooked by conventional mini-grid developers.
“FlexGrid is a rapid scaleable off-grid solution. Our demand-driven approach uniquely minimises the typical demand-risk. The bottom-up model substantially lowers the up-front investment required to serve defined use cases. This way rural electrification can be done in a profitable way while using tariffs that are aligned with customers willingness and ability to pay.” explains Stefaan Debref, co-founder of FlexGrid. “Our approach combines the AC-power of a mini-grid with the simplicity of a solar home system. A FlexGrid can be installed fast and can be easily expanded by a local workforce when demand grows.”
The technical viability of the FlexGrid approach has been demonstrated in Zantiguila (Mail - inaugurated in May 2018) and in Ndego (Rwanda - installed in April 2019). Meanwhile the company already obtained financial close to equip another 5 villages in Mali in the coming months.
“We receive great support from public investors (ElectriFi, AfDB, the Swiss government, Get.Invest), but we also attract already quite some interest from private investors” says Servaas Van Den Noortgate (co-founder). “Once a stable cash-flow is proven from this portfolio, we are confident to be able to raise sufficient money for rapid scaling.”