 Hello, everyone, and good afternoon, especially to the IEEE Africa sections connected to this virtual Salon. Welcome to Engineer for Change or E4C for short. Today, we're pleased to bring you the E4C virtual Salon in partnership with the Institutes of Electrical and Electronic Engineers for IEEE. On the topic of renewable energy solutions, my name is Mariela Machado and I'm program manager here at Engineer for Change. I'll be one of the moderators for today's Salon. The Salon you're participating in today is sponsored by IEEE in partnership with the IEEE Africa sections in Tunisia, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. The Salon topics are informed by the professional and regional interests of the sections. Participating sections schedule their meeting during the Salon and will receive Q&A priority during this special event. If you're interested in hosting a virtual Salon for your organization, please contact our webinar scheme. The Salon you're participating in today will be archived on E4C and our YouTube channel. Both of those URLs are listed on this slide. If you're interested in additional webinars, information on our webinar series is available on our webinar stage. E4C members will receive invitations to upcoming webinars directly. If you have any questions, comments, and recommendations for future topic from speakers, please contact the E4C webinar series team at webinars at engineeringforchange.org. If you're following us on Twitter today, please use the conversation, please join the conversation with our hashtag E4C webinars. Before we move on to our presenters, I would like to tell you a bit about engineering for change. E4C is a knowledge organization and global community of more than one million engineers, designers, development practitioners, and social scientists who are leveraging technology to solve quality of life challenges faced by underserved community. Some of those challenges include access to clean water and sanitation, sustainable energy, improved agriculture, and more. We invite you to become a member since it's free and provides access to news and thought leaders, insights on hundreds of essential solutions in our Solutions Library, professional development resources and current opportunities such as jobs, funding calls, fellowships, and more. E4C members also enjoy a unique user experience based on their side behavior and engagement. Essentially, the more you interact with the E4C site, the better we will be able to serve you resources aligned to your interest. We invite you to visit our website, www.engineerforchange.org to learn more and sign up. You can find examples of awkward energy products like the Mobisol Solar Home System that you're seeing on the screen on our E4C Solutions Library. There you can learn more about technical performance, compliance with standards, academic research, and user provision models of these systems. All the information is sourced by E4C research fellows and reviewed by our community of experts. It's available to our E4C members free of charge, so be sure to sign up. A few housekeeping items before we get started. Let's take a moment now and practice using the WebEx platform. Please type right now in the chat window what part of the world are you joining us from. If you're joining us from the Africa sections, be sure to type in what section are you joining us from. Use the chat window, which is located at the bottom right of your screen and just type your location. If the chat is not open yet on your screen, try clicking the chat icon at the bottom of the screen in the middle of the slide. Let's see where everyone is joining us from. Brooklyn, New York City, Michigan, Nigeria, welcome Nigeria, Seattle, Egypt. Welcome Cairo, Nigeria. Welcome everyone, Luciana and Nairobi to see we have everyone connected. Welcome. Excellent. Let's go to additional now you know where the chat window is in case you're encounter any trouble and you want to type in any, any comments. Okay, a couple of additional instructions before we get started. You can use this window to share remarks during the webinar. And if you have any technical questions, just send a private chat to engineering for change admin. If you're listening to the audio broadcast and you encounter any troubles, try hitting stop and then start. You may also want to try opening WebEx up in a different browser during the webinar. Use the Q&A window located below the chat to type in your questions for the presenter. Again, if you don't see it, click the Q&A icon at the bottom of the screen in the middle of the slide. We'll gather these questions to ask the presenters at the end of the webinar. We'll leave at least 15 minutes before the hour and make sure that we ask all the questions to our presenters. Here's a reminder for IEEE Africa sections. If you type any questions, please say which Africa sections are you joining us from since you are getting priority in the Q&A during this virtual salon. Excellent. So without further to say, I would like to take a moment now to introduce to introduce you to our moderator for today's virtual salon. Dr. Henry Lewis, an associate professor and Francis Wood Endowment Research Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seattle University. His research areas include electricity access in developing countries, renewable energy and appropriate technology. He's also president and co-founder of Kingawatts for Humanity, a non-profit organization providing electricity access and business opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Lewis served as a Fulbright scholar to Copperville University in Kidwa, Sambia. He's recognized as a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE and is an associate editor of the Journal of Energy for Sustainable Development. He's also the author of the book, Upgrade Electrical Systems in Developing Countries, published by Springer Nature. He also hosted a couple of webinars and series of webinars around this book and we really invite you to check them out on our website. Dr. Henry Lewis, without further to say and thanking you for moderating this virtual salon today, I pass it on to you to start the virtual salon. Okay, well, welcome everyone. It's great to be back doing another webinar with Engineering for Change. I've been involved with this organization for a while now and last year had the pleasure of doing a six-part webinar series based on off-grid electrical systems. It's great to be back. We put together a great panel with three speakers, all of whom are based in Africa, two in Kenya and one in Nigeria. And we've asked them today to talk about some of the roles of renewable energy in combating energy poverty. And really, you'll see that the hot item right now is using renewable energy to increase access to electricity in off-grid communities. Now, before we get started, I do want to note that one of our speakers, our second speaker, Ugenwa Ujimeni, is having some trouble connecting to us right now. So we'll see if she's able to, in fact, join us. We might have to change our order a little bit if she's able to come in. So we'll just kind of keep an eye on that. If she's not able to join us, we'll just give our speakers a little more time to talk and also have a little more time for questions at the end. So thinking of that, what we're going to do is we're going to handle all the questions in a moderated fashion at the end of the session, so after our speakers have spoken. However, if you do have questions during the speaker's presentations, please do type them into the chat window and we'll do our best to cover all of them at the end as a group. At the housekeeping aside, let me introduce our first presenter, Kieran Campbell. Kieran Campbell works with the analytics team at PowerGen Renewable Energy, which is based in East Africa and Nairobi. So they're working on mini-grid solutions, solar mini-grid solutions. Kieran manages the development business intelligence and in that role he reports on customer behavior and power system performance. I actually have a connection to PowerGen. My nonprofit was one of their early customers five or six years ago and it's been great to watch that company just skyrocket since then. So they've come a long way. They've gotten a lot of good press and investment and I'm excited to turn it over to Kieran. So Kieran, let me just pass the presentation tool to you and you're on. Great. Thanks, Henry. Yeah, and thanks everyone for joining. I decided to share today about PowerGen and our work and then hear your thoughts answering questions towards the tail end of this. So to really kick this off, I'll just give you kind of a very high level of view of PowerGen, who we are, what we've been doing all that time since Henry worked with us in our early days. So PowerGen's taken a long and circuitous route since we were founded in 2011. Our early days we were building small scale wind and then we found out that was very hard. We switched to solar and then eventually found our way into solar mini grids, which we thought was an interesting business model. I mean, I've been really pushing that forward to the point today where we're now operating in three countries with an office and a port. So in Kenya, Tanzania and Sierra Leone, Nigeria as well, and now managing nearly 12,000 customers. So we have really settled on mini grids as kind of our bread and butter business. But I guess to start, what are we working towards here? What's the challenge we're trying to address? So I'm sure you're all aware, but on the continent of Africa, there's 600 million people that don't have access to reliable electricity, which is massive. And it's the goal of the UN that by 2030, everyone will have that under sustainable development goal seven. So we can look at this and you can see this, this massive problem, but also look at it as a massive opportunity. And so we think that the private sector has a unique role to play here. If we can get the funding needed to deploy the right solutions that can connect people up. And so one of the solutions and what we've settled on is what we're calling solar mini grids. And so a big as I'll define it is a distributed energy system, essentially the national grid that you and I all know, but kind of scaled down to serve an individual community. So it'll power upwards of 200 300 homes using a generation resource kind of in the center of town. So for us we developed solar and but it could be anything hydro or wind and that power is then distributed throughout that that village through distribution lines and poles and wires until it reaches the customers home. And then in each customer home, we install smart meters. It allows to retail power that customers can pay for with their phones. So, as you may know, well, in East Africa, mobile money is very common. And that's a preferred name and a method of payment. And so we, in that way, a lot of these devices that we're pulling our internet enabled. So we can enable payments using the internet and we can track customer issues and system performance, all from a remote location. And so we're a lot of these systems, these systems have cutting edge technology that allows us to really show that we're providing reliable service. So, where do kind of mini grids fit in within the available options for electrifying all these customers off grid. So, I think what I'll say here is I think each of these solutions has a unique role to play in in connecting the off grid customer. So traditionally, what's been used is extension of the national grid. And so that's a, you know, you'll take these the lines that already exist, just extend them out and then connect additional villages. But what we find is a lot of these villages are really far away hundreds of kilometers point where it becomes very expensive to do that and it's probably not the most cost effective way to to people. I think that's where solar home systems and mini grids come in as a as really interesting solutions to to provide power to people for the first time. And so before the solar home systems really paved the way for what the grids are doing today. So solar home systems are a world we'll get more into this later. They're a standalone like household level power systems that that is has a really low upfront cost and is easier for customers to pay off over time and provides like basic services. And then, and they're probably most ideal I'd say in in areas that are really dispersed and not densely packed in and maybe too expensive for a minute. And I think many grids play well is in this this middle ground where it's too far for the national grade. But you still have a densely packed like community where you can connect up 100 200 people. And then one advantage is then you can power higher usage equipment like machines. And what I see is the pros cons and benefits of each of these different solutions. I think I touched on this a little bit before in describing the components within a mini grid. But I think what we're, we hope to do in our tagline is companies where transforming lives through smarter power, while developing the energy system of the future in Africa. And I think it's important developing the enders energy system of the future that we're trying to deploy technologies that are at the forefront of what's happening globally in the energy sector. So we see even in most countries. Utilities are looking to decentralize their grids and create autonomy in certain areas through mini grids. They're trying to add on sensors to parts of their their network so they can detect issues and troubleshoot problems remotely. And they're trying to really focus more on the customer instead of just thinking that they're selling electrons they want to make sure that they really understand their value proposition. And so we are really trying to emulate those same same approaches so that we're meeting that these changes instead of playing catch up later. And so, yeah, I touched on this so yeah we're through these technologies and trying to, you know, we're by building we're doing now, building mini grids kind of on the grid edge. We, we think that we're allowing. Integrates are part of a general convergence of Africa's energy sector to to the close. And so how, how do we get there. The, I think the challenge and what we are really working to solve here is for mini grids to scale and really connect. All of these last amount of consumers, we need to find ways to scale and get the funding needed to to really develop faster and and and and prove that this is a business model that can work and provide the return state investors traditionally look to in infrastructure like projects, which we consider mini grids to be. And so, that's why we're, you know, focused on operational excellence and trying to reduce costs and improve the, the revenues that customers produce. So it's two fold, getting the right technologies out while doing it doing it a way that makes it financially sustainable as a model. And it's one component here and increasing revenues. Well, this doesn't happen in isolation we were ultimately serving customers and so we as an organization have become ultra focused on our customer as the end all be all and the, ultimately, it's them that we we we serve and we try to really prove our value proposition to them day in day out. And so, what are customers. Our customers are typically the rule for so they are in our grid areas hundreds of kilometers from the main grid and majority waves below the what we typically define as the poverty line. But there will be. We connect up they're both right about two thirds of our customers are typical residential customers, your households, but they're also small businesses. hairdressers or their welders or, you know, small shops. And, yeah, so they're ultimately varied and and we really try to suit our values to each of them. And so how have we done that, just kind of tailoring to to our customers. If we have undergone a few different initiatives to really prove our service as an electricity provider to our customers. So, you know, ultimately it comes down to your customers believe that power is a reliable and value service provider. So, to prove that we really try to ensure that our, our power services is reliable. So, typically, you see here for utilities utilities will in Africa will have pretty atrocious like uptime is constantly rolling blackouts, but we try to cut against that so our systems are available upwards of 98% of time and and trying to provide that addition to that when customers have complaints or want to have questions answered that we are very diligent about answering those questions through our call center. So we try to do things that are proactive to engage with customers as well, whether that's doing outbound calls to key customers that we really, really value and want to engage with or running promotions. We try to show that our customers are valued and that we are, we are good value for money. So I'll get into some other issues in depth more primarily to start a new model that we've rolled out our local agent. So our local agent, essentially, I mentioned at the outset that customers pay for power using their phone with mobile money. So you can imagine in off grid areas, this pretty poor internet connectivity, which would result sometimes in the past that customers would send a payment it would kind of get stuck up in the cloud, and then we would get pretty angry phone calls from customers who were waiting on their payment to come through and register on their meter. And this was such a large problem that we started brainstorming ways to to get around this and ensure that customers would get power when they wanted it. And so that was the genesis of this idea to have a local representative at our sites, who could purchase power credit from power gen and then retail it to our customers on on our back for a small commission. And it's been a really positive innovation for us. We find that probably 80% of our transactions now go through this individual is customers really value the convenience of being able to go to someone and pay in cash. But also the, I think the face to face interaction with someone who is a power gen representative on site. One way that we've, we've, you know, continue to iterate on the model to ensure that customers are happy and appreciate our service. And the other way that we are really use other initiatives that we're pushing on as a way to improve the business model. Ultimately, we're, you know, to ensure that customers appreciate our service, we are CS values, they want to show that they also like have the means to use our power and it's one thing to have a connection but if there's no, there's no way to use power if they don't think that, you know, beyond just lights and sockets we want to show that like people can, you know, things like listen to radio or watch TV or, you know, keep drinks cold. So we've started to offer kind of additional packages that customers could get upon connection. So beyond, you know, they want to have a few additional lights and sockets to fill additional rooms, they can do that. If customers want to buy some appliance from us on loan, we have done sales trips to offer those. And finally, like we tried to work with larger customers who have big equipment and see how we can, you know, offer kind of more efficient equipment that will be valuable to them. So this kind of gets that we're trying to address customer wants needs in ways that also help the business model by increasing usage of our power. And so touching on those first two. So we've done kind of with each new set of customers that we connect we offer additional wiring packages, more lights and sockets, as well as, you know, a catalog of appliances that we could make a return trip to sell. And I think the value here is it's user appliances that are often hard to find in the these communities, just because it's not the right distribution of them to the site so you know, customers would often use more power if they had access to the appliances that, you know, could allow that. And so that's kind of the market gap that we're filling in and touch on this at the end there but we're trying to kind of what you would consider more residential type of appliances or internal wiring packages. We've started to try to crack the code on how you could hook up larger equipment to our, our systems. So in many of our sites you'll see a million machines that are used to mill nays that's kind of, you know, turned from a kind of a curl down to a fine fine of drain powder, which is used to make a staple food here golly. They're kind of pretty energy intensive machines that are run on diesel motors. And so they're, they're pretty ubiquitous and all over. And so there's a really interesting opportunity that we've been trying to figure out, but how could you convert those machines. So that they either use an electric motor or they could just be an electric piece of equipment themselves. So, we have really like done a lot of our indeed to figure out like, Oh, how do you, how do you integrate this you have to adapt the system to have the right technical requirements like whether that's converting a line from one phase to three phase. You need, you need maybe a motor that has like a soft startup or something kind of like that. A lot of technical challenges around this but we're, we're closer to it and and actually in the next week or two, going to deploy 10 or so milling machines in Tanzania at our sites. And so why we put so much focus on this. You know, we have a broad base of residential customers on our grids. But if you can figure out how to incorporate kind of what are anchor clients customers who will use more power that can really move the needle on your utilization of a system and help make the financials work. At a lot of our sites like these larger consumers could be upwards of 30 to 50% of the usage on the site. And so adding a few of those could really boost overall usage. But another barrier here has been in, you can figure it out technically but how do you convince the customer that they should buy this thing that hasn't been proven to them yet and they've never seen. Because there's no other drops around with this work. And so the way we've tried to work around this is, well people believe things that they can see. So, if we can go on the road and bring this equipment and and run it there and they can go through the motions of milling at the site, or, you know, welding with this engine then they can kind of see. Okay, this is where and also PowerGen is going to finance the cost of this so that can, that helps reduce the upfront barrier to purchase. So that's kind of one way it's both a technical challenge but it's also been a marketing and sales challenge and how do you incorporate these equipment. And I guess I'd add why we call them productive views. So I think our theory of change here is, we, you know, we know kind of broadly that access to power is, is critical for economic development, and you can look at that and like a macro scale. We think that has to filter down to the community level so if you have businesses, businesses that are either created or enabled by access to power, or can generate some sort of income through that activity. We think that has kind of overflow effects. So you, you know, if you enable a business that is generating income, that income that can flow back into using more power, which is then creating this virtual cycle of development. And so that's why we think, not only does it help the model in the near term but it can overall help with growth in these communities. And I'll kind of wrap it up with where we are now and what's kind of next. So, yeah, power gen is, we are kind of full steam ahead on on developing mini grids, both in primarily now in Tanzania, where we have closed financing for our grids and then Sierra Leone as well. And our hope is that we're 12,000 connections now, hoping by end of year to be at 20. And, and really we're just at the water sale we're hoping to continue to push forward the narrative that mini grids are a viable solution for rural electrification. That they should be considered within kind of national electrification planning as, as something that could be valuable. And that partners and kind of investors should look to me grids. And we're looking at donors as well to kind of continue to progress scale up of this sector, enable mini grids developers to, to connect with customers over time. And then I'll leave you with photo. And this is one of our customers at a site in town called one Donnie, which is in the region within Tanzania. And so her quote said power gen electricity is helping me with my business. I can now put drinks in the fridge and watch the and receive life comforts and feel like I'm in town. I haven't personally been to one, but she's a great cook. So that's where I'll leave it. And I'll think I'll hand it to Laura next. Yeah, great. Awesome. Awesome presentation here. So our next speaker is Laura Sundlad, who is the corporate development manager at Pohami, which is another Kenyan based solar provider. They work in the solar home system space. And they do financing and the distribution of solar home systems. So, Laura leads the development of Pohami's growth and innovation strategy. She's has many years of international development experience, primarily now working on the intersection of energy access and financial inclusion. Those are two, of course, key pieces to develop. She's worked for ARC finance and the global off grid lighting association in the past. And she's worked at the wide range of international partners, including private enterprise impact investors and micro finance institutions to improve access to capital for the off grid sector. So, I'm very excited to have Laura with us today. She's going to talk about solar home systems and the role of them and this energy access problem and how they're able to get these systems in the hands of their users. So, let's see. I think you handed the ball off to Laura. So Laura, I think you should be able to advance the slide. Yes. Thanks, Henry. Thanks, Kieran, also for the presentation on power gen. So now shifting to Pohami, which, as Henry said, is a solar home system distribution and financing company. We are based here in Kenya and at the moment we are operational in 14 counties in Kenya. And we are working on providing energy access as a gateway to financial empowerment and limitless opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa. So from 2020 and beyond, we are also looking at an international expansion. So today I'll talk a little bit about solar home systems and the role that they have in reaching SDG seven. And I'll also share a few thoughts around how people can get involved in the awkward solar sector as I often get inquiries from people who are looking to transition into the sector who have heard it's an exciting place to work, which it is. So I'll share a few thoughts on that. And I'm really keen to hear questions from the audience at the end and answer any questions that you have. I'll say for myself personally, I'm relatively new at Pohami. I joined in July. So for that, as Henry mentioned, I was working at Cogla and Arc Finance. So I'm also happy to take questions sort of on lanterns and the sort of Pico solar space overall, although now I'm focused purely on solar home systems here at Pohami. So looking at the core products offering of Pohami, we offer a solar home system that is really meant to be a stepping stone into electricity access. And we do this in sort of a two tiered way. So we have our foundational product, which comes from for Sarah, a German manufacturer, and offers access to light to torches to a radio and to crucially mobile phone charging. And after customers have been paying back for some time, then they're able to upgrade to a TV included system. Now, for us, what this solar home system means to our customers is that they can switch away from kerosene lanterns. They can switch away from dry cell torches. They can switch away from going to charge their mobile phones in a nearby town or far away town or likely. And so it means that they have a lot more comfort and safety in their home. So most of our customers are people with families buying solar home systems for residential use. Some of our customers do also use their solar system for business use as a duke or kiosk owner, but mostly these are really for improving quality of life at home. And the way that we operate since we're a newer business we started in 2016 is that we decided to focus really on the consumer facing part of the value chain. So that's why we are supplier agnostic. We procure products from the best suppliers that we can. We also procure software products from the best suppliers who are out there rather than focusing on everything, which is what the first generation solar home system companies had to do. And so by focusing on the customer relationship, we can get more understanding about our customers. We can measure their payback history. So we can actually develop an in-house credit scoring tool to then use for selling more livelihood improvement products or also selling financial services in time. So this year was the first year that we piloted school fee loans. So in Kenya, people pay school fees three times a year. It's quite an investment for families and education is constantly rated as the top priority for families. And so we found that by offering a short term loan during school fees is specifically geared at families with children at school age. We were able to both ease their cash flows in that time and also to make sure that our revenues don't take such a dip during school fees. In terms of solar home systems, they do range from sort of very small multi-light systems to systems that power a lot more appliances. And Kira mentioned earlier that solar home systems are primarily DC based. And that's true in the case of our solar home system. So we sell the system together with the appliances. The appliances are very efficient so that we don't need such a large battery or panel. However, there is a lot of availability now also of AC compatible systems. And we see those particularly, for example, in the Nigerian market where people have already appliances that they want to power with solar. So there's a lot of range in the products that are out there, just as there's a lot of range in the customers. For us as we're serving customers who about half of them are below the poverty line, we find it important that we have an entry level system that meets their needs while meeting also a high quality threshold that we set. So here we're going a little bit more deeply into how the business model works. So you might have heard of pay as you go solar, it's been around for the past decade. It came really from the realization that while people were already spending money on substandard products such as kerosene, they were not able to put savings together for the upfront cost of switching to a better technology. And so it became necessary to offer products in a way where people pay a smaller down payment and then pay over time and eventually unlock the system and have it for themselves. And so what made pay go possible was really the development of a technology that allows remote lockouts. So the way that it works is that for us at PowerMe, a customer would meet a PowerMe agent. The agent would share information about the product and about the terms and conditions attached. If the customer decides to make a purchase, they pay the down payment through a BESA and then our call center from Nairobi called the customer to validate the sale to make sure that the customer has understood what they're buying and they understood the financing terms. Then our technician actually goes to the customer's home and installs the product. So a lot of companies in the sector do not do in-home installations, but we found that since for most customers this is their first solar home system, this is the first time they're interacting with this technology, it's better for us to go into the home and install it to make sure that the panel is actually on the roof and not inside or on the ground to make sure that the wiring is done correctly and to make sure that the customer knows how to insert tokens into the system and how to use it. And then once the installation is done, we again call the customer and check that they are happy with it, that everything's working fine. And then they start making daily payments again through M-PESA. So here in Kenya we're really quite lucky with how pervasive mobile money is. I know that in Nigeria it's a little bit different. So pay-as-you-go solar companies there either do have some mobile money partnerships, but then also enable payments in different ways through, for example, remote banking agents. But here we go purely through mobile money. And as customers pay back, we do track how they pay. And as soon as a customer doesn't pay for four days, we give them a call and ask what's going on. So pay-as-you-go does have some flexibility. Customers are able to make payments when they have money and then not pay when they don't. But if they don't make a daily payment, that does mean that the system shuts off. And this is something where we're looking at different ways to incentivize customers to pay for a longer time up front. But most of our customers prefer making daily payments because that is how they make money. So they are selling products in their kiosk or they are selling milk to the daily cooperative. They're doing things daily and so they pay us also daily. And then the third part which is crucial for us is we're investing heavily into building this customer network and to build our customer understanding and gathering this data, analyzing it, going out to the customers, interacting with them. And so what we really are looking to do as we mature as a business is to offer other services and products that can improve the lives of our customers. So as I mentioned, we piloted our school fee loans. We're also now developing a pay-as-you-go smartphone to help expand digital connectivity here in Kenya because there's still quite some gaps in terms of access to mobile internet. And of course with mobile internet, then you have access to a whole host of other services. We're also looking at things like water harvesters. We're looking at insurance and some of these will come from us directly and some of them will come through partners. So for example, for insurance, we wouldn't build an insurance company because that's not our core business. But we can very likely partner with a micro-insurance company who's looking to expand their reach and that way it's a win-win-win for us, for the customer and for the other company as well. So here's one of our customers. This is Margaret North Tyren. She is a mother, a chaos donor and a Palami customer since two years ago. So we wrote a case study on Margaret. You can access it through our website, through our partnership with W Power, which is a network looking at women and gender equality in renewables in general. And so with customers who, these are the kinds of customer relationships we want to cultivate. So we really want to be a brand that our customers trust. We want to be a partner for them over the longer term. We want to offer some choice and flexibility. I think that's something that's still relatively new in the electricity sector, which has focused very much on the macro level of, you know, how many kilowatts are needed, where does the gridline go, how does transition work. And in off-grid solar systems and in many grids, we really start with the customer and we start with their needs. We start with their aspirations. We start with their income with their hopes and their dreams. And then it's really crucial that we value that trust that they give us when they buy a whole new technology into their home. And that's something that for me is really the driving force in my work and why I've stayed in the sector for so long is because we see impact quite quickly. And I really believe that there is space for every solution in this market, but with solar systems and with lanterns, we can move quite quickly. And, you know, if the Kenyan grid, for example, expands in 10 years to some of the areas that we work in and people are able to get a grid connection in 10 years, that's great. But, you know, within that 10 years, that's, for example, if a baby is born today, that's the first 10 years of his life. And so it's better to have the solar home system right away and have better access to education, have better access to a healthy indoor environment. So that's my driving force in staying in the sector is seeing development impacts quickly and with the customer at the heart of everything that we do. So speaking then a little bit more broadly about the impact that we've had here in Kenya, so Margaret is one of our customers, but we have at the moment about 7000 other customers who are active in our system. And in addition, over 1000 customers have already paid back their system in full. So that means that the system is unlocked and it's theirs to use. So that means that we've been able to help families save on energy expenditure, because they're able to move away from kerosene or from dry cell torches, or from paying for mobile charging. We're also able to avoid CO2 emissions because kerosene lanterns emit a lot of black carbon and are both harmful for the planet, but they're also harmful for health. They are a major cause of indoor air pollution. We're able to help people create additional income. So whether that means that they can work later in the evening or whether they can get to their workplace early in the morning, if they go before sunrise. There's a lot of different ways in which people can can use their product. They can even sell mobile charging for a fee. And so overall, we've we've improved the lives of over 40,000 people. And of course, as we're rapidly growing, that number will continue to rise. I want to mention briefly also that we have committed now to the Goggle Consumer Protection Code. So Goggle is the industry group for the industry, for the operating industry. And we have put together a set of principles for consumer protection that companies in the industry are now signing up to, so including Palamy. And in this consumer protection code, what's crucial is that we are transparent with our customers. We treat them with respect. Our pricing is fair and we protect their data. So there's a there's a host of these kinds of good business practices that are important to build and maintain that trust. And I'm really proud that that Palamy is committed to those principles. So I want to look then briefly at the road ahead before I hand over back to Henry and for questions. So sometimes I get the question, you know, well, what's the point of Solar Home Systems since, you know, the greatest in any way, the grid is what we want and the greatest, what governments want. And there, you know, it is true, of course, that Solar Home Systems alone don't replace the grid. So Solar Home Systems won't power sort of heavy industrial efforts or large institutions. But at the same time, we can't really wait for the grid to reach everyone. If we according to SE for all, if we go at the current rate, there will still be almost 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa without access in 2030. And so that's what I alluded to earlier in terms of we need to move more quickly and with Solar Home Systems, it's the easiest way to do that. And then another question that I get is, you know, how about here in Kenya? Because KPLC has done a lot of work in a grid of electrification and this is also the sort of hotbed of off-grid solar. This is the home of Mcopa Solar, which is the largest pay-as-you-go company in the world. But even here, there's still about a quarter of the population who don't have electricity access. So there's, for us, as we're looking at international expansion, we're also looking very much at how do we penetrate more deeply in the counties that we're in, and how do we also go into more of the underserved counties here in Kenya. And so I'm a firm believer that we can accelerate access and to do that, we need people, we need policies, so we need the government to give support, give funds, or at least to, you know, enable a tariff structure in terms of import tariffs that works for the sector. And we need private sector efforts and there's really space for a lot of companies here. And this is something where the off-grid solar sector, or electricity access in general, is so exciting because it does combine private sector and public sector for sort of maximum impact. And so I mentioned that I wanted to speak a little bit about how you can get involved in this space. And so as some of you on the webinar might not be as familiar with the types of roles in off-grid solar, there are a little bit different than in conventional power sector. So what I see, for example, as our needs at Palami but also more generally in the sector, there's a lot of need for people at different levels in data science and analytics, because that's a key driver of the industry, related to that there's a need for software development and engineering. On the hardware side, so Palami doesn't do hardware R&D, so this is not so relevant to us, but in general there's still scope for improving the products that are out there, improving efficiency, getting appliances to work with even less energy input. And then there's a real big need for finance professionals. And so these companies, these basic solar companies are a hybrid of consumer goods financing and electricity access. And so there is a need for people with strong understanding of portfolio management, of investment, of consumer finance. And there's also a lot more. So there's also need for researchers, there's need for people with ethnographic research skills. There's need for people with strong HR skills. So do check out the companies in off-grid solar if you're interested in being involved. There's also lots of programs for visiting fellows or for sort of more short-term exchange of expertise. And so I do hope that between Kieran and me and hopefully with the third panelist, we're able to invite some of you to dig a little bit deeper into the sector and potentially join us because it's really a fun, diverse, dynamic place where no day is the same. And there's so much to do and so much sort of progress to be made. So with that, I'll hand it back to Henry and I really look forward to your questions. Right. Thank you so much, Laura. So unfortunately, despite our feverish efforts behind the scenes to get Ugenua connected to us, we're still having some trouble. So I think what we're going to do is we're going to move into the Q&A portion and if she is able to join us, I invite her to interact with us in that answering those questions. So I'll pose a general question. And while I'm doing that, if you're in the audience and you have questions that you want our panelists to ask, go ahead and enter them in the chat. You happen to be at one of the IEEE sites. Go ahead and make sure you put that as a preamble to your question and I'll make sure that it gets asked. So to start off, you know, I've been involved in this area for 10 or 11 years. And it always struck me as to, you know, why aren't we seeing, why didn't we see mini-grid solar home systems, solar lanterns coming out 20 years ago? Why has it only been in the last five or 10 years that we're starting to see this? So Karen, I'll ask you to have some thoughts on that first and then Laura follow up. Sure. Yeah, I think the emergence of solar home systems and mini-grids. I think early on, a lot of it was due to cost declines in all of these technologies or emergence of new technologies. So when I say cost declines, I think, you know, our systems rely upon solar panels and batteries that are pretty core and one of the more expensive components in the systems. And so maybe 15 years ago before we saw real price declines in those technologies, developing a mini-grid or solar home system probably would have been prohibitively expensive for these customers. So it's only through that kind of cost decline that we could start to sell power or solar system, solar home systems at a competitive price for these customers. So that's kind of one. And then I think two is really like the emergence of, at least in East Africa, the emergence of mobile money as a payment method through M-Pesa first and then, you know, with other carriers sense. That allowed for consumers in remote locations to pay for systems where they're maybe sold, you know, sold from a central point. And that made it much easier to track kind of follow up of these sales and manage these sales once they were kind of out there. So I think that those are probably the two things I would call it. Great. Lori, you want to add to that? Yeah. I mean, I think, of course, the fall in the cost of components is really key, as Karen mentioned, and mobile money has certainly propelled the growth here in Africa. I think the other thing that has shifted in the past 10 years is thinking from both donors and from governments on how electricity access can be organized. And so previously, as I mentioned, it was really more large scale infrastructure, grid expansion, and that was sort of at the heart of the efforts of, say, the World Bank. And now we see, for example, hearing Kenya with the innovative new program called COSAP, looking at how the World Bank, the Kenyan government, private fund managers, and the private sector together can offer a combination of grid solar and grid electricity access to counties that have previously had poor access to electricity. So that mindset shift to having decentralized solutions as part of the overall solution has also been helpful in increasing the growth of the sector. Yeah, great, great. Exciting times to be involved in this space for sure. Can we have a question from one of our IEEE sections here that the question asks, you know, who's, when we look at the renewable energy that's deployed in Africa, you know, I think, oh, I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, but, you know, why is it so much solar now? And why, and how do you assess the performance of the installation? So why is it primarily solar being selected? What are some of the reasons for that? And then, you know, how are the solar installations doing it? Laura, do you want to start off with that one? Sure. I mean, for our scale, for really household level systems, solar is kind of the only option. Sort of, there have been some efforts, but I mean, things like micro hydro or wind turbines might work for for a mini grid or a micro grid, but Karen can speak to that. You know, why that hasn't taken off in the same way. But yeah, for us, sort of as a household level technology solar is safe. It's easy to install. It's easy to maintain. The costs have come down. It's, you know, superior to using, for example, diesel, which, you know, you can have household level diesel generators, which can power a lot of appliances but then have a continuous cost. Of course, a continuous environmental impact and a hazardous impact to the household as well. So, you know, for a for a solar system level or household system level solar is really the only option. Yeah. Yeah. I would say for micro grids, you do see hydro mini grids as well. But they tend to be more like, you'd say a large scale hydro project, it just happens to have a mini grid kind of bolted on because it's there's a town right there if you could hook up with distribution lines. So they do exist. But I think why solar over if you wind. So while they're both variable resources, solar is variable in a more predictable way. And it's, you know, so you're not depending on wind speeds at certain times and it's easier to size the system kind of around those you can estimate the load that consumers will will need that you'll need to serve. And, you know, between solar batteries and a generator, you can appropriately size the system to kind of meet that. So it's a much easier resource for general grid planning. Hello. Okay, I hope you can hear me now. We have another question. This one Karen is directed more towards you. Have you considered using 12 volt DC to supplement the AC that you provide primarily for lighting to do. Yeah, I guess compliment the AC that you're providing. Yeah, that's a good question. We have looked into this. Really, I think because yes we in some places we've gone we found consumers have already already have maybe DC appliances from a solar system that they they own in the past. I think what we settled on, I think we distribute the word. We, we distribute to the household in AC because I think you need some sort of DC DC couple kind of at the household level which adds some expense, you know, no engineer here. I think it added is technically easier just to kind of continue to them and then add on the sales of AC appliances as well. Yeah, that constant battle of AC versus DC right. Okay, so we have, we have a question for Laura here. What does that have to do with the maintenance and repair of the system? So who's responsible for that? And how long does that go? If you have three year payment contract, what happens in your, your four? Sure. So, well, every company organizes this slightly differently. And we have a year and a half payment term and we have a three year warranty. And so for that three years, three years for the cold system. So it's, it's your one year for the appliances. Now, within that warranty that comes from our manufacturer and we pass it on to the customer. And we then send out our technicians to service customers when they have issues. The way that it works is that the customer gets in touch with our toll free number or customer care number here in Nairobi talks about the issues that they're having. We try first to troubleshoot on the phone. And then if that doesn't work, then we open a product ticket and then look to close that as soon as possible for the customer. Now, we are looking constantly at ways in which we can improve that process and also to make sure that we're really educating the customer even more thoroughly. So our systems are relatively, you know, simple. They're pretty robust. There's not a lot of moving parts, but there are some basic things that you need to know, for example, about keeping the panel clean. And so we are actively looking at ways in which we do that better. But we do offer this three year warranty for the system. We're looking also at, you know, what should we offer us. So right now Palmy is three years old. And so we're starting to get some of the post warranty questions now. And we're looking at, okay, do we sell repair services also for customers whose warranties have expired. Right now, we don't do that yet. But it's definitely something we're looking at actively. So with our system customers can use them for about five years in total. And at that point, typically you would want to replace the battery. But, you know, the systems can go on for longer than that. But up to the three years of the warranty, they're covered under us. Great. Great. Thanks. I think we'll move. So, actually, before we move on, we have some kind of behind the scenes chatter going on. If you happen to be connected, maybe you can, you can identify yourself in the chat window to one of us and we can maybe try to unmute you. And it's hard to know which, which column number you're at. So, while that's going on, we have another question directed to Karen and power. Jen, have you looked at any combined heat and power in any year installations. No, not really. I No, wouldn't say so. Not your target. No, not our target market. I think we've just been pretty head down just how to make this all work. We diversify. Yeah. I couldn't tell you why we haven't looked at it, but I haven't heard. Sure. Great. And I imagine Laura that's that's far too large of a scale for a solar system to consider. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, for sure. One thing I found very interesting in both of your presentations is this expansion or creep beyond just the sole provision of electricity, getting into financing, getting into leasing and making available appliances. You know, where do you think this ends is I've heard people talk about the opportunity to create credit profiles for people in rural areas, which has never been done before so that you can even unlock greater finance opportunities. Are we just scratching the surface in terms of using electricity to access people and then provide them other goods and services or have we reached a point where we think we've kind of gone through all of the opportunities that are there. I'll let either one of you respond to that first. There's definitely still a lot of opportunity out there. I do think we're at the beginning. So, I mean, the pay as you go sector has introduced all kinds of appliances, different services. And, but even as an industry we're still quite young power me as a company within that industry is of the younger end as well. And so I mean, getting products to people in remote or rural areas is quite an undertaking. And once you have reached those customers you do really want to build lifelong partnerships with them, or at least long term partnerships. And that's why, you know, having that trust as I mentioned is so crucial. So what we're looking at power me is, what are the services that we can offer that really improve livelihood so we don't want to just push out any product. We want to offer things that are high quality and really add value to our customers. But I think in terms of financial inclusion pay as you go product is often the first formal financial product that a customer has. And so that can unlock future services. And we already see this, you know, for us, for example, in terms of we can look at which of our customers have good repayment rates and then become eligible for a TV upgrade or who is eligible for the school feel on pilot. Because, of course, we have to also be honest about which type of product is the right type of product for the right type of customer. So not every product is for everyone. But if we can get digital connectivity out to consumers if we can get financial services beyond just credit so also insurance or savings. Then we do start to unlock much more potential in rural communities. And we also then are able as a business to, you know, spread some of that customer acquisition costs over a longer period of time with more products and services offered to a customer over their life cycle. And so yeah, I think we're really just at the beginning and I'm really excited to see sort of all the innovation that's coming up in the sector. And you know what's what will be in the next five years, because when I look back, you know, the last five years, a lot has happened. I don't think anyone would have really imagined how quickly this can take off. But now it's really looking at okay both spreading the reach but also deepening the relationships that we have. Yeah, yeah, well, I think it's for many grids. I think many great developers so far haven't gone as deep I think it's some we've seen some solar home system companies go where they expand along these different verticals, but I think the way that we've done it we try to, you know, selling appliances is a additional vertical but it, it supports kind of our core business of selling power. And so it's a value added value added service that we we offer, but we have explored, you know, is there avenues like if we can sell Wi-Fi to customers as something that does consume electricity but it's not. It's just another service we could get into, but I guess the one we probably also pour it into is water sales. So if we can do a water pumping at a village, that is something that complements it consumes electricity but it's also is what we found is often painful in villages where there may be boreholes at sites that have are either untapped or or, yeah, just not being utilized and and if we can get the equipment set up that could be something else to to kind of to enter into and and and really support the community with in that way. So you're right. It is a lot to explore, explore still and I think we're we're trying to do it in a way that we don't get too distracted with too many different shiny new initiatives, but as long as it fits in nicely with what we're already doing. Great. It's going to be exciting to see where this goes. Now, I know John is in Nigeria and he might have some live questions, questions that weren't asked in the chat. John, if you are able, let's see if you have any questions from your audience there. Thank you, Erin. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. The only question we have is who is in charge of the installation or renewable energies in Africa and who does the need assessment after the completion of the project. Can you repeat that last part there? Who does the need assessment after the project is completed in Africa? Who does the assessment after the project has been implemented? Yes. Yeah. Karen already have any thoughts on that? Sorry, assessment of what? Which? The assessment of the project. So I think the question that has to do with, you know, after the project has been completed. And who goes back and assesses how successful it was. I guess I don't know if we, I mean, we do commissioning reports around projects once we're done building it. But I think it's generally just kind of ongoing monitoring and reporting on how things are going and kind of it's, you know, we're continuing to track things like how well is the actual system performing? Like is it, does it seem like we're utilizing the resources we have well or generator is running all the time? And, you know, can we find faults? So we're always kind of looking at our sites and trying to get a word on when something has gone awry. But then that's kind of from a power system perspective where we're tracking. Then we're also looking at like what, what are customers doing over time? Like, are they, you know, are kind of trends in usage and spend? Are they kind of engaging with our servers? What pain points do they have? So we don't really formalize that in kind of like a, an assessment on like here, here it is at the end, this is what we found. It's more just kind of over time we're, we're, we're continuing to watch and see how things develop. I hope that answers your question. Yeah, thanks. I think, I think we'll move on to a question that's directed to Laura here. So the, the question is, you know, what, what criteria do you use to identify customers? And then secondly, you know, how do you, how far is your distribution reach? Are you targeting to the closer to towns or in really far flung areas? Sure. And so for us in terms of customer selection, the key piece of information is really, are they willing and able to pay the doubts? And there's a lot of discussion in the sector on whether you can use data in some way to screen customers. And, but the truth is that, you know, at least for us at our scale with 7000 customers, which is still relatively small, we don't have sort of robust enough data that would be unbiased enough to really make a screening decision based on our past customers. So it would result in a bias. So for us, and we've heard this also from investors and others who are, you know, looked at the industry. The down payment is really something where sort of the rubber meets the road and the customer is really making a clear claim that this is something that they value and that they want to buy. And that's really crucial for us because again, we're not just pushing products. We want this to be a choice for the customer and an informed one. And then making that payment is a clear indication that they want the product and that they're also able to put at least that much money together to pay for it, which indicates that they are able to pay in the future. And then, of course, as customers join, then we can learn more about them. We can learn when they pay, when they don't pay, who pays, who doesn't and be in touch with customers proactively if we identify customers that might be more risky. And what was the second question? The second question had to do, or the second part of this, this question had to do with, you know, your customers, are they, are they closer and closer to the larger towns or are they in quite rural areas? And how do you get into the role? Yeah, so the answer, well, most, so we are in 14 counties, sort of all along the western border of Kenya. We do have a lot of customers in and around Kisumu, which is the third largest city in Kenya. But then we do also have sales all the way up in Turkana, as well as in the Kakola refugee camp, which is remote but dense, so a little bit different than most places. Now, of course, logistically, it is easier to reach customers that are closer to towns. It's easier for our sales agents. It's easier for our county managers. But we're constantly looking for ways to spread our reach within the counties that we're in, and then also go further. One of those opportunities is provided by this COSOP program, the World Bank-funded program, which looks specifically at how do we get to upgrade solar into more remote locations. But, you know, it's a business reality that customers who are closer to our distribution hubs and closer to our sales agents are the ones that we reach first, and then we go further from there. Great, great. We're nearing the end of our time here, but I do want to ask one other question to the panelists here. You know, I'm a professor at a Jesuit University, so I always have to explore some of the ethical questions that are out there in this space. And I'll give you two options, and you can tick which one you might want to address. Well, the first has to do with data privacy. So many good companies, solar home system companies collect a lot of data from a lot of users, and we've identified some ways that that can be leveraged to offer other product services, etc., which many of which are beneficial. But, you know, in the United States and Europe and so forth, we take our data privacy very seriously. So I'm wondering if there's any protections out there, any guidelines that have been proposed, what to do with that data, how to share it or not share it. The other question has to do with e-waste. So, you know, we're putting a lot of batteries out there, a lot of electronics, you know, what do we think of recycling disposal? Is that an open problem? Do we have good solutions yet? So feel free to disnibble at either of those questions, and then we'll wrap it up. And maybe I'll start with Laura on this one. Okay. Well, I'll leave a little bit at both of them, just because both of them are really pertinent and things that are discussed in the industry a lot. On data privacy, that is part of the consumer protection code that I referred to earlier. At PowerMe, we've taken the line that we do not sell our customers data. So we do collect a lot of it and we do use it internally. We do look also at how do we actually keep that safe? I mean, we're a relatively small company, so probably not as interesting for hackers as one of the bigger ones. But we of course do need to keep our customer data safe, and that's part of being a trusted partner. So for us, the customer data is not for sale. And that's a key sort of defining baseline. And then we're working, you know, to learn more on what we can do. And then we rely also on OGLAT to work on this as an industry. A lot of the thinking so far has come from learning from mobile network operators to of course work with data privacy for a long time. On eWaste as well, actually, OGLAT has been doing quite a lot of work also with CLASP, which is another international organization. For us, you know, we're just getting into the stage, as I mentioned, since we're three years old, our products are three year warranty. So we're getting into that space. Now, eWaste in general is not a problem that is limited to awkward solar. It's a much bigger problem that, you know, in the end, the Kenyan government will also need to tackle. And so, you know, we're very willing to work with sort of developing different solutions. But at the moment, our line is that just that we don't leave that problem to the customer. We collect the products back at the end of their life. But then in terms of a final, you know, solution for eWaste, that's something that we still need to work on together. I think also together with the mini grid sector. For sure. For sure. Okay, Karen, I'll turn it over to you. You've got about a minute here. Cool. Great. Thanks. I'm seeing the data privacy question. So it's like, Google, the industry association for mini grids, it's called MDEM, is putting together some very similar consumer protection rules. And we'll probably model it by closely up with what Google has done. But I think, in general, as an organization, we take data privacy very seriously and don't sell it. And we have very strong and good controls on who we share data with and who has access to our customers data. Then on the battery waste question. Yeah, I think it's helpful. So our batteries, we have processes in place to return them to the manufacturer who buys them back at the end of their lifetime. It's coming right next time. And so we're compliant with a lot of the environmental conditions from entities like yours, like NEMMA, and Aurora in Tanzania. So yeah, take that very seriously and make sure that it's handled well. Great. Yeah, it's good to see that these are topics that are being discussed in industry. So let's wrap it up here. Thank you so much for your time to our presenters. I'm sorry that Genoa wasn't able to connect with us. Maybe we'll have her at a future webinar and I'll turn it over to Mariela who will present the closing slides. Thank you so much, Henry, and thank you, Kieran and Laura. This was super insightful. Thank you so much for everyone that participated, especially the IEEE Africa sections, which really appreciate how interactive this conversation was. To obtain your PDA certification, you have the link there. If you have any questions, reach out to us. We appreciate your time. And, you know, it's the last comment. And unfortunately we didn't have Genoa jump in. She's based in Nigeria. So we have appreciated her perspective in this discussion. What we will try to do is record her slides and send it over to everyone that signed up for this webinar so that we capture her perspective. Unfortunately, we didn't get her to connect. And that's, you know, part of the problems that we face in certain parts of the world with connectivity. But we'll make sure to send it over to you guys, the ones that are here and the ones that register. Thank you so much, Henry, for a great conversation. As always, thank you, Kieran, and thank you, Laura. Till next time and have a great afternoon or end of your day. Goodbye. Bye everybody. Thank you.