GINNI (Green Independent Nexus Node Infrastructure)

Rural electrification and floods have been a major challenge for Bangladesh. Because of improper refrigeration around US $1065 million of fish and dairy is lost and thousands of people lose their life due to the lack of timely flood warning.  

We at e.Ray, propose a clean and sustainable solution for boosting local value-chains and improving the quality of life for the remote and underdeveloped settlements. Our solution produces services like ice for food preservation that increases the food supply. It also gathers hydrological data that generates early flood warnings in an ALL-IN-ONE self-sustained containerized modular solution. This data helps the authorities to improve the water management and the response to hazards. 

Our business model is known as B-O-O business (built-own–operate). It combines the innovative technical advantages with a proven business model: Ice as a locally demanded good and DaaS (Data as a service) for local and global value chains. 

In rural areas of Bangladesh, infrastructure and reliable public services. These are reasons why these areas lack economic development and opportunities for youth. 

In recent decades thousands of water boreholes have been built to supply water for rural communities, but water quality isn’t tested on a continuous basis.  Bangladesh is prone with high risk of floods. 

Also, almost 18% of Bangladesh is flooded every killing more than 5,000 people and causing financial loss of over $1.7 billion annually. 

In Bangladesh, around 2.90 million tonnes are produced annually. Frequent power cut has been a major concern and affects refrigeration. Several studies revealed that over 30% of Bangladesh’s harvested fish is lost due to poor refrigeration before they reach consumers. This loss accounts for around US $1065 million every year. Similarly, milk is in most of the cases transported to milk collection facilities, without any form of cooling, reasons of high bacterial growth during transportation. 

Could an integrative approach help to tackle these two issues?  

At e.Ray we have piloted energy and IoT systems that  providing renewable energy and monitoring system to community and ensures food security by providing a reliable solution for refrigeration, water purification and flood warning.  

Rural population 

Rural electrification is still a big challenge in developing countries which impends to increase their economic growth. GINNI hybrid power solution targets to provide product like ice to the rural areas and help to develop their economic condition. 

In Uganda our technology is serving the rural dairy farmers who were able to generate up to 40% additional income. We have founded Wamala Energy Co. Ltd. (WE Company) in Uganda with close cooperation of GIZ to operate the rental of agricultural ice production and electrification systems. 

Every year thousands of people die due to flood. Our flood forecast and warning system will help rural population save critical infrastructure at the time of disaster. 

Government 

Our infrastructure collects valuable river information including water level, pH, temperature. This information helps to government bodies to make policies and reduce the risk of hazards. 

Insurance sector 

Insurance sector relies heavily on objective data to be able to offer any kind of solution. The lack of such data results in missing availability of insurance. Our river monitoring tool could provide this critical data to cover the vulnerable and poor from climate change related poverty. 

Deliverable services: 

• Our energy harvesting service using GINNI will provide local residents with better opportunities to make a living, increase trading opportunities, access to education, access to finance, access to health and social contact with emigrated family members.  

• Better flood warning models will reduce the impacts of flood events saving lives and costs.  

• Also, the implementation of the infrastructure will create direct jobs as the operation, installations and maintenance will be performed locally and it will create additional indirect jobs. As with the case of Uganda the clean energy is used to produce ice in order to refrigerate milk, and fish creating new jobs for selling ice. source of energy, replacing fossil fuel generators. 

• The environment will benefit through less damage from flood events and zero carbon source energy, replacing fossil fuel generators.

Process: 

GINNI provides two main fundamental services to remote and rural communities based on turbine platform EMOR and solar power systems. Therefore, the solution will use zero carbon source of energy to produce high quality ice for refrigeration as a boosting factor of cooling chain for food security. It will also give early flood warning alert based on reliable and real-time data collected from the rivers. The Disaster and Water authorities can use this data to enhance their decision-making process for a better risk management. The data about the quality and levels of the water is very impactful for society, and the second most demanded service by rural population: high quality ice made from quality water. This infrastructure services guarantee long-term revenue, distributed multipurpose units make it easier to maintain the infrastructure. Revenues from ice and data can balance the business and gives value and empowerment to local and international stakeholders in a more effective, reliable, inclusive, and sustainable way. 

Technology: 

Our solution GINNI is a combined renewable energy based containerized solution. It combines photovoltaic system on the containers roof, river turbine EMOR that integrates a satellite-based monitoring system. This system generates 370 kg of ice per day, runs pump and water disinfection. 

We are combining the power of solar energy and hydro power to supply high value services for rural communities and international stakeholders. 

Our intelligent hydro power turbine collects sensor data in the stream of the river.  The turbine protects the sensors from debris and powers them. 

Today’s challenge is, that existing sensor stations have not got enough power to deliver real-time measurement and are prone to vandalism and theft. Therefore, we combine the production of ice for the local value chain with the monitoring of the water resources. The combination of these two services allows us to hire local staff instead of sending people from the local water service authority to maintain and protect the infrastructure. Best practises show that the infrastructure is more accepted when the local population benefits from the infrastructure. 

 e.Ray holds patents for debris deflection and the anchoring mechanism of the infrastructure. Our solution gives real time warning in case of emergency. 

The sensor of this technology gives vital information about the river such as water level, temperature, precipitation, pH value etc. 

The combination of energy service and hydrometric information can increase, the spatial density of sensors, thereby making it possible to improve the accuracy and reliability of flood forecasting.

Our system produces 370 kg of ice per day, which is used to preserve milk or fish. The water we are using is preventively disinfected with a certified UV disinfection system. Thus, GINNI drives economy through clean energy in a non-invasive way. 

The below link describes the Theory of Change from our solution

https://drive.google.com/file/... 

The water turbine has been deployed for testing in River Donau in Munderkingen, South Germany. The sensor system has been in constant testing at the eRay’s headquarters in Darmstadt. We now have the permission to deploy a complete water turbine along with sensors in the Rhine river. 

The pilot of the GINNI has also be deployed Mbarara region in Uganda where the dairy farmers are using the power generated from the Photo voltaic unit to power refrigerators to store milk properly. 

The data generated from GINNI(Water level, temperature, pH etc) is distributed the RiverSenses App.The link and credential for the Riversenses app are cited  below: 

https://rs.e-ray.eu/login 

Login - demo@demo.com 

Password - erayEuropaGmbh 

We have prepared a web app for renewable energy potentiality mapping in Bangladesh where solar, wind energy is included. The link for our web app is: http://www.arcgis.com/apps/Vie...  

Currently, we are preparing the kinetic micro-hydro potentiality map for Bangladesh and in future it will be added with our web app. 

1. Current number of people we are serving:  We are now serving 20-25 people with our projects in Germany and in Uganda. 

2. The number we will be serving in one year: Next year Villages in Uganda and Colombia with each around 500 inhabitants will be served with ice and water services. 

3. The number we will be serving in five years: In five years, our aims to serve 100,000 people with our solution. 

4. Instant flood warning for thousands of cities and villages located at a river. 

• Till 2020 we will work on demonstration projects in the first target areas of Bangladesh, Colombia, East / West Africa and Europe. We will pick one or maximally two regions to deploy a demonstration network with a total of 25 GINNI stations (Project volume $ 2MN) before the roll out. 

• Fish industry contributes 3.69% to Bangladesh’s country GDP and 22.6% to the agricultural GDP. Similarly, dairy industry contributes 14.08% of agricultural GDP. Therefore, our five years goal is to enhance the agricultural GDP by at least 1% using our solution. 

• 2,200 cooperative Micro-Utilities combined with river monitoring that will help to provide instant flood warning for thousands of cities and villages located on rivers 

• To create > 7,000 sustainable jobs 

• To increase water sanitation and quality with partners 

A lack in project finance and marketing is the major obstacle. Obviously, we have other barriers like site assessment and structures to pre-develop projects. However, such an obstacle is manageable with the help of local partners. 

We are looking for a grant, partners or investors to overcome the project main barriers .

There are a lot of river island (Char) in the delta regions of Bangladesh which are either not properly electrified or not or not electrified at all.  There are lot of fishermen dwelling on these islands who have to rely on drying the fish for preservation. We will deploy our GINNI solution in one such island as a pilot project. This will help them refrigerate the fish during peak season and make them available on the market freshly. In off-peak season this ice from disinfected water can be used for consumption. Our real-time river monitoring system will also help understand the river ecosystem and develop a mitigation strategy during flood. 

Once we make our footmark, we will expand our solution to other islands or rural villages with poor electrification. We will be shifting the production to Bangladesh that will reduce our production cost and drive the manufacturing sector of Bangladesh in addition to the power and disaster prevention problem. Therefore, we will conduct a feasibility study to select 10 - 15 more pilot sites to establish a first GINNI network and give a rough estimation of the total potential of our solution 

The data generated will be beneficial to the goverment bodies and we will collaborate with these bodies to establish a network of GINNI that will strengthen our fight against climate change and move towards a sustainable future.

• Five persons are based in Germany 

• Two are in Colombia 

• One is in Bangladesh and  

• Currently three are in Uganda 

e.Ray consists of an impact driven diverse international team with vision to help rural community by delivering tools to create and services using clean energy and IoT

Sebastian Lemke(Industrial Engineer), an industrial engineer with specialization for renewable energy management especially water and solar has  worked as a network administrator for a mid-size law and tax consulting company. He is responsible for the development of solar and hydropower units.

Fabian Suarez (Mechanical Engineer), supports in the development of hydropower units, user engagement and project management. 

Md Reaid Alam (Geo-Informatic Engineer), has more than six years' experience to process and analyze SAR and optical satellite data and helps in identifying potential site of deployment to maximize the renewable energy output. 

Suraiya Fatema (Hydrologist), did her PhD and Masters from TU Darmstadt, Germany. She has more than five years of research experience in the field of water and environment management and has also worked as an environmental expert in National NGO and Local Government Engineering Department of Bangladesh (LGED) for more than three years.  

Jeet Biswas (Software, IoT, Blockchain developer), has a Masters degree in Electrical and IT engineering. He is responsible for sensor development for GINNI solution. He uses his more than 3 years of experience in telecommunication industry to develop the telemetry of sensor system 

Juan Camilo Sepulveda (Full-stack IT developer), leads the development of web application, sensor system and database engineering.  

1. With the European Space Agency (ESA) 

1. World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) 

1. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) 

1. TU Darmstadt and  

1. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. 

There are two revenue streams:

Selling of ice: 2 to 4 kg of ice used to store 1 kg of fish in Bangladesh depending on fish types.  

We can produce up to 370 kg of ice/day. With an estimated sales price of 0.15 $/kg and an assumed capacity factor of 0.6 in off peak time and 100% selling of ice in peak time (5 months) we plan with an annual revenue of $ 12,000 to $ 20,000. 

The second revenue from collection of hydro-meteorological Data as a Service (DaaS) plan in similar cases the water authority alone spends $ 3,000 per year to operate one station. 

With a network of stations and an integration of international value-chains for the data (WMO,weather services,remote sensing industry and insurance companies) we estimate an annual turnover of $12,000. 

The annual cost to operate a GINNI is between $ 7,000 and $ 13,000 depending on the labour cost.

The turn-key investment in one GINNI is currently $ 130,000 for a pilot.

Simplified amortisation calculation: 

EBITDA= $ 20,000 + $ 9,000 – $ 11,000 = $18,000  

Simplified amortisation = $ 130,000 / $ 18,000 = 7 years 

Due to economics of scale, we assume future investment cost per station for a network of 20 GINNI to drop to $ 80,000 per unit (amortisation: <5). 

Target investment per GINNI is below $ 50,000 with local production and serial production. 

To finance the capital expenditure for the GINNI infrastructure we are working on innovative public private partnerships (PPP). For a network of 2,200 GINNI an investment of approx. $150,000,000 is necessary. 

With this investment a Net Present Value of $ 250,000,000 is realistic over the lifetime of the project. 

We are applying for the Tiger Challenge for financial and marketing aid. It would be a great opportunity to receive support and IT suggestions from Tiger IT team. 

• Local NGOs 

• International stakeholders 

• Private company like Brac dairy, Pran dairy 

• Water authorities 

• Department of fisheries 

• Fish cooperatives 

• Agriculture authorities 

• Research organization like WorldFish, Climate Change cells