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 tha ..read more

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 So ..read more

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 e ..read more

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 s ..read more

**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.  ..read more

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 thi ..read more

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 w ..read more

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 ..read more

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, expl ..read more