Open Energy Access

Picture a remote island, populated by many small and medium-sized communities. The local economy largely runs on a fishing industry. Children go to school, markets sell food & goods, but two important things are missing: reliable energy access and connectivity. There's no real cell signal in the village of Maybuuho, Philippines. This means that not only do people lack the ability to communicate outside their village, renewable energy solutions like solar-powered mini-grids or Solar Home Systems aren't very easy to use.

Without any sort of connectivity, modern off-grid energy companies that are operating today end up de-prioritising "zero connectivity" locations, which exist all around the world. Okra is a technology company that manufactures everything needed to set up what they call a "mesh grid" as a kit, and then sell those kits to  Energy Access companies (like SHS or Mini-Grid companies) around the world. Their latest innovation is called the Cicada WiFi, an open source communications module, that brings WiFi connectivity to remote areas using VSAT technology.

Tamara Mahoney from EnAccess and Oscar Aitchison from Okra talk about Cicadas - not the insects, but the chip - today on Open Energy Access. They discuss the impact this technology had not only for the company that participated in their pilot, but also potential impact for the village of Maybuuho, who could be offered Internet As A Service for the first time.  

More information: https://enaccess.org/materials/okra-cicada/ 

In this episode of Open Energy Access, I talk with Ricky Buch (Tech lead) about why project developers should start integrating into the D-REC platform today. The D-REC, or Distributed Renewable Energy Certificate, was created to solve a problem that will have a direct benefit for Energy Access project developers and for corporates who want the biggest return on their investment in renewable energy in terms of climate impact.

In this episode, we'll discuss:
- How you can generate new revenue streams with D-RECs
- Steps of integrating into the D-REC platform
- Why the D-REC platform is Open Source
- What makes the D-REC stand out as the most promising way to monetize environmental attributes in the DRE space

This episode was originally recorded as a web series and is posted on Youtube. If you also like to watch your podcasts, then subscribe to the EnAccess YouTube channel.

Links:
enaccess.org/drecs
d-recs.energy
D-RECs on GitHub
Energy Web Foundation Origin

Contact:
D-RECs developers
EnAccess Support

Today, I'm talking with Paul Needham and Ricky Buch from Positive Capital Partners. EnAccess is one of the funders of a project they are working on, together with South Pole, called the D-REC Initiative. 

The D-REC, or Distributed Renewable Energy Certificate is being created to solve a problem that will have a direct benefit for Energy Access project developers and for corporates who want the biggest return on their investment in renewable energy in terms of climate impact.

In a place like California, a homeowner who installs solar panels on their house can actually sell the renewable energy that those panels create, creating a way to make money. There is no equivalent to this for DRE developers working in off grid locations, which basically means the energy access industry hasn’t yet been able to tap into the already-existing demand for renewable energy attributes. And on the other side, corporates haven’t had the chance to make the kind of climate impact that they could be making, if they were to have a certifiable way of investing into distributed renewable energy.  This is where we need the D-REC:  an open source, internationally accepted market instrument which can validate, and put a real monetary value on the environmental benefit provided by DRE systems.

In this conversation, Paul and Ricky talk about how they got this Initiative off the ground and why Open Source is so important for its' success.

Links:
enaccess.org/drecs
d-recs.energy
D-RECs on GitHub
Energy Web Foundation Origin
EnAccess blog post

EnAccess was the first to step in with funding for this project from, and we are really happy to currently be joined by the Shell Foundation, Good Energies Foundation, Signify Foundation, GIZ-DeveloPPP, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), UNDP, the IFC, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). 

In this episode, I’m talking with James Vasile, a Partner in Open Tech Strategies, a consultation firm based in New York City. This conversation is going to explore the why/why not,  the upsides and any downsides about open source in energy access. I’m going to try and cover some of the most common questions that I hear.

James Vasile is a recognized expert on free and open source software. He has over fifteen years of experience as a user, developer, advocate, and advisor in all things open source; and has further expertise in licensing and community-building, as well as non-profit and small business startup. Open Tech Strategies works with a wide range of clients such as Microsoft, the MacArthur Foundation, The Red Cross.

Why should people open source their work? What are the benefits? What are the downsides? What should you consider before you pick which license you want to go with?  James helps companies figure out these questions every day.

Blog series mentioned in the episode: Open Source At Large

**This project has been moved over to Resilient Oxygen and their sister organisation CREATIVenergie. Learn more at https://www.resilientoxygen.org/

The Resilient Oxygen (R-O2) Project centers around the development of an oxygen concentrator specifically designed for robustness and reliability in challenging conditions whilst being simple and affordable to repair in low resource settings (LRS). 

When this episode was recorded, I spoke with Phil Bonnett, an anesthesiologist who has worked in a hospital in Zambia, in Africa. 

Today I'm going to be talking with Camille André-Bataille, the CEO of ANKA Madagascar, about an idea for a new business model called AgriGrid - the idea of pairing access to electricity with local agricultural sectors. 

The AgriGrid business model refers to a hybrid organization that combines commercial opportunities in rural electrification with food & agricultural value chain development. The idea is that beyond providing electricity, an AgriGrid operator would also play an active role in developing rural food & agricultural market activity. There’s so much to explore about this idea and how to integrate energy services with agriculture - ranging from a mini-grid company that acts as a services provider to existing agricultural intermediaries, or going all the way through to a fully integrated agribusiness that grows, processes, packages, and retails its own food products – in addition to selling electricity to the community. 

The AgriGrid concept was created by ANKA Madagascar and Amanhã Ventures, and the EnAccess Foundation is proud to have supported this open source R&D project. All the materials can be found at enaccess.org/agrigrid. 

Anyone that is selling a pay as you go device or service should know about the OpenPAYGO Token. 

When PAYGO technology arrived in the energy access sector, it was a game-changer. By paying small amounts of money over a longer time period, families could afford better quality and safer lighting, phone charging, and much more. 

But there was a frustrating problem that emerged - the integration of PAYGO into energy access products was being controlled by a handful of companies, and each company had their own closed system. Think about it like this - a distributor of solar home systems would have a box containing solar panels, a battery pack, wires, etc. This product would work exactly the same no matter who purchased it, but the distributor would have to have one supply of boxes with PAYGO technology A, one supply with PAYGO technology B, and another supply with PAYGO technology C. The frustration was felt  by both the sellers and makers of energy access products all over the world, and was (and is) an industry-wide issue. 

What we're talking about today with Benjamin David (CTO, Solaris Offgrid) is the big-picture solution that Solaris Offgrid designed. They took on the task of creating one free, open source, industry-standard solution called the OpenPAYGO Token. It can easily integrate with already-existing PAYGO platforms and is available for any manufacturer to implement in new devices as well. 

Today we’re going to talk about a really cool open source hardware solution with Damian Veling, the CTO of Okra Solar - this episode is definitely going to be more interesting for the engineers and developers out there, though anyone working in the IoT space will find the conversation interesting. 

Okra is an Australian technology startup based in Cambodia. They work with local utilities to transform offgrid communities into energy abundant microgrid economies. One of the big reasons why millions of households all over the world still don’t have energy access infrastructure is because it’s physically hard to reach a lot of these places, which is why Okra relies on remotely monitoring the communities they service. But to be able to work like this means there needs to be some sort of data or wifi connectivity in the village - but connectivity is also a real challenge in some of the more remote areas of the world.

How to solve this very common and very real issue of connectivity in hard to reach areas? That’s what we’re going to talk about on today's show. Okra’s solution is called Cicada, an open source IoT Communications Module for Energy Access. Damian solved a really big problem that a lot of other energy access companies will be able to relate to - if you have been struggling with a solution for connectivity in your own IoT space, you’re going to want to listen closely: Cicada can be the solution that reduces your time to market, which can allow you to get back to work on the real problem you are solving.

EnAccess is proud to have all the open source materials published online. So if you’re ready to dig into the code and the documentation, or read the story behind the project, head over to https://enaccess.org/projects/- you’ll find everything you need there. 

If you have any questions, comments, or tweaks for the code, we want to hear from you! You can visit https://www.okrasolar.com/ to send a message directly to the developers.

If you have an idea for a project that could be beneficial to the broader energy access sector, head to https://enaccess.org/ and submit your application today. 

The EnAccess Foundation is proud to present the first episode of a new podcast, Open Energy Access. 

The EnAccess Foundation is passionate about open source solutions, efficiency, and transparency in energy access. In this episode, we discuss the first project that we published - a Survey Toolkit that was developed by Devergy, a company that operates solar mini-grids in rural Tanzania.

But first, we cover the basics: Tamara Mahoney, head of marketing at EnAccess, explains the big picture issues that the energy access industry is working to solve. Rahul Barua, one of the co-founders, explains why EnAccess was started and what we do.

Next, we get into the project. We're joined by Gianluca Cescon, a co-founder of Devergy, to talk details about the project and what it means for the industry. The conversation includes some great learning experiences, tips, and the story of how an early mistake resulted in a successful (yet quite different than originally planned) project.

Finally, we discuss the realities of innovating in energy access, open source solutions, and and how we can all learn from each other. 

We've never produced a podcast before, but are hopeful that bringing some of these behind-the-scenes conversations to the public will inspire new thinking and help new organizations or entrepreneurs.