Cycle, profitable energy for isolated communities

The lack of reliable sources of energy condemns communities to underdevelopment. Governments have tackle this problem working with isolated and non effective solutions that fall short of what is considered “modern access to energy” by the UN and that are not suited to take full advantage of the opportunity to grasp the benefits of creating networks.

We are developing the first modular and scalable microgrid for off-grid areas. It allows transactions of surpluses of energy among the members of the community enabling an energy market that generates new ways of income to the families and that make the most of the renewable generation potential. 

Cycle will stimulate the starting of thousands of new businesses and industrial activities. People will have extra income, more hours of studying and substantial health improvements. Communities will have a great mechanism to activate sustainable development preventing the emission of  millions of tons of CO2 yearly.

There are more than one billion people without access to energy around the world, half of these people live in Africa. In Latin America at least 32 million people live in darkness.

In Colombia there are 433.000 families without access to energy and another 1.710 towns have access to energy just between 4 and 12 hours a day, not counting with a reliable service at all. These more than 2.5 million people live in remote areas where due to the geography of the state have little or no presence and basic services like energy or water have not arrived nor are they in plans.

Historically, those communities were who suffered  most in the armed conflict, the abandonment by the state sunk them in a vicious circle of poverty, lack of opportunities and poor health conditions. Today, families have few options for progress, the lack of energy makes any attempt to grow a business activity or work the land uncompetitive. On the other hand, current solutions may become more of an outflow than an income stream.

The people who live in those communities we want to serve are very different depending on the region, being Colombia very diverse in terms of ethnicity. In the pacific they are mostly afro descendants, at the north and south indigenous and throughout the entire territory peasants. However, in any case, they survive carrying out some productive activity, such as fishing, agriculture, weaving, livestock, among others. The community is composed of a group of families, who have lived in this land for generations. Each household is composed of 5 people on average.

Apart from the academic study, we have worked together with research groups of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia accompanying them in field work to know firsthand these communities. These approaches have allowed us to relate to communities and learn how to do information gathering to make visits on our own.

In addition to giving them access to energy, we want to focus on providing them with the capacity to take advantage of 100% renewable generation capacity to generate energy surpluses that can be sold within the community and to be used in the development of productive activities, thus generating new sources of income and stimulating development.

Our solution consists of a platform that enables clean energy smart-grid access to low-income households in rural areas by interconnecting and managing decentralized energy resources at the community level. We create smart grids through a bottom-up approach by enabling people to become solar entrepreneurs trading excess electricity for profit. Instead of individual solar home systems (SHS) working in isolation, we provide a platform that links them together in a peer-to-peer network to create smart-grid energy communities, thereby tapping into underutilised power from excess solar energy produced by solar home systems and optimizing the production, storage and consumption of energy at the local level. This energy can be traded within the community, allowing households with surplus power to earn money by selling it to those families who would otherwise go without energy. 

Our smart grids are a mix of decentralized energy resources, interconnected to our platform through the "Harvester", a smart meter that allows users to exchange surplus solar energy. The harvester gathers data about generation and consumption behaviors and our platform processes that information and provides the control and economic mechanisms to trade energy at the local level. Our system knows who has a surplus of energy, who needs it and let it flow through the network, then the sender instantly receives a monetary reward. The harvester also optimises individual battery state of charge, facilitates remote grid monitoring, optimisation and control and provides an intuitive user friendly interface to households.