SolarworX - Energy Inclusivity For All.

The Founder & CEO Félix Boldt has always been considering issues related to climate change and social inclusion at the center of his life and career. After 3 years working as a technical advisor for Greenpeace, he joined Micro Energy International which focuses on bringing clean energy to low income rural areas in Africa. He was then recruited in the founding team of Mobisol - pioneer in the solar home system industry. He helped them building their Solar Home System product from the ground up for more than 7 years.

Today, he is more determined than ever to solve the last mile energy problems in order to allow energy inclusivity for all.

More than 2/3 of people living in Africa still don't have access to a reliable source of energy. While small solar energy stand alone systems exist, people still face problems of solution adoption due to low purchasing power, low battery durability and flexible autonomy challenges.

Solarworx is trying to solve this last mile energy problem in Africa & South East Asia by providing mobile money enabled (Paygo) & modular Solar Home Systems that can:

- be paid in several times through mobile phone payment,

- have an adapted autonomy to fit most energy needs by stacking one battery on top of the other,

- talk to the user to help illiterate people interact with the battery & mobile payment system,

- be inter-connected to allow the final user to exchange energy with his neighbors, increase the mini-grid efficiency hence reducing his/her energy costs at the end of the day.

1. Lack of reliable energy access in remote areas in Africa and developing countries. Just in Africa, more than 70% of the population don't have access to electricity.

2. Lack of financial ressources & cash availability from these communities to afford reliable and clean energy. In average 80% of rural population is in this situation.

3. Lack of solutions adapted to the energy needs of households or small businesses/ productives uses. Eg: a farm will need to have a reliable access to a power source to pump water to irrigate their crops on a regular basis.

4. Many people living in off-grid areas have difficulties to read or interact with mobile payment systems.

5. Excess of energy in stand alone systems that could be shared between different individuals to increase energy distribution efficiency hence decreasing energy access costs.

6. Local businesses, hospitals, schools, etc. need a reliable source of energy to power their activities (water pumps, fridges for vaccins, school lights, etc.).

SolarWorX developed the Solego: a mobile money (paygo) enabled solar home systems helping people living in off-grid areas getting access to reliable energy. We are also working on the development of the "Mesh" which will allow to inter-connect the Solego in different households together. This network of solar home systems would create a "solar mini-grid" allowing to improve the efficiency of the energy distribution hence reducing the electricity costs per households.

Our direct customers are distributors of solar home kits in Africa. We do believe that they are the best positioned to understand the local needs.

We provide them directly with our Solego. Its smart & connected feature helps the local distributor to monitor remotely on a dashboard the state of charge of the battery & other parameters to ensure a better durability of the systems.

We also provide to the distributors marketing & design support when needed.

End users benefit from a large range of solutions: reliable energy access, option to pay in different settlements (paygo), voice assistance helping illiterate users, battery autonomy & capacity adapted to their needs, access to energy efficient appliances & productive uses and reducing the electricity price by inter-connecting the Solego between households.

1. We help people to get access to renewable electricity so they can improve their livelihoods (ie: safer at night thanks to LED bulbs instead of dangerous kerosene lamps, getting access to information, ...)

2. With the Pay-as-you-go mobile money integration, we help people who can't afford to finance the system upfront to pay in different settlement. Even further, we can connect the systems between each other and decrease the electricity costs per user.

3. We give the opportunity for anyone to start a local business by providing them a full flexibility on energy capacity (eg: water pump for farms).

The CEO & Founder Félix Boldt was part of the founder team of the Solar Home System pioneering company Mobisol. He was holding leading roles in the operations in East Africa as well as product development in Berlin and China for 7+ years.

It's during that process that he decided with Jakob to build the Solego. Jakob took the lead on the technical & product part of the project.

He has been dedicating all his career to fight against climate change and energy poverty. He wants to extend that passion & mission to a scale that can create even more impact across continents. That is especially possible thanks to the real modularity & inter-connectivity features of our Solego. This gives a full flexibility to start a solar powered mini-grid anywhere at any scale.

He also speaks fluently Swahili. He feel strongly attached to this continent and he is totally aware that there is still so much to do for rural electrification.

He has been working with partners in many African countries in the past. He has been involved in every aspect of its product & operation development.

Felix Boldt also worked as a Technical Advisor for Greenpeace & Micro Energy International. He has a various set fo skills ranging from technical product expertise to business development in Africa, team management & leadership.

At first, Solarworx was just an idea. We bootstrapped the company in the beginning to develop the first version of the product and raised 500,000€ in a couple of weeks.

Today, we are a team of 7 talents spread across continents and our products are deployed with our distributor partners in 12+ African countries.

At Mobisol we were a small team of 5 in the beginning, we ended by being a team of 300. I was managing the product and operations department with a team of approximatively 50 persons. I was involved in the recruitment, training and improvement processes of the team during the 7 years I worked for the company. 

The product we built & launched - the Solego - is precisely designed to allow anyone living in off-grid areas to get access to a level of energy that fits their needs. For example, a local business owner who sees his/ her amount of clients increasing could increase his/ her solar energy autonomy by simply stacking one Solego on top of the other.

We are one of the first real modular solar home system that allows users to stack from 80 Wh up to 1000Wh in an energy efficient way. It is also probably the smartest SHS on the market with PAYGO integration. Our distributor partners can access the usage information and resolve problems remotely when needed.

Also, The Mesh feature allowing to connect batteries between different households is quite new in this sector of activity. Once deployed, it will result in a fully modular mini-grid installation to be installed wherever there is the need.

On basis of the Theory of Change, our company development stage corresponds to the "Company Incubation" part of the framework.

Activities: Information about our products are disseminated on a public scale as well as for our targeted distributors throughout Africa & South East Asia. These publicly available data creates the opportunity to enable social entrepreneurship in our targeted countries and raises awareness on a worldwide scale towards the close link between energy access & improving livelihoods.

Outputs: Our operations have scaled & are deployed in local areas (3500 Solego). Further efforts need to be put in marketing & sales to reach higher levels of sustainability.

Short Term Outcomes:

Solarworx can produce more than 500 data points per system. Within a bit more than a year of operations, we can see that most of the end users consumes at least 70% of their energy produced. Also, 60% of our end users who have local businesses need more reliable energy to cope with the growing requests from their clients.

Long Term Outcomes:

Larger companies are already looking to integrate similar solutions than ours in their cultural & tactical approach. Every year, the off-grid population is growing in terms of energy needs hence there is a need for a fully modular & scalable solution to answer these upcoming challenges.

Today, we have around 3500+ end users with our Solego systems at home. There are various uses cases: households with no/ unreliable access to energy, hospitals, schools, agricultural farms, barber shops, etc.

In one year, with realistic assumptions we will serve around 5000+ end users. In five years we should serve around 80,000+ users across Africa and South East Asia.

Our goal is to enable any low-income individual with poor energy access to elevate their standards of living. By inter-connecting the systems we create a modular mini-grid which can be even more inclusive as poorer individuals could benefit from the shared electricity of their neighbors.

Technical: We are still facing technical constraints in the R&D of the "Mesh"  feature. It will be a technical tool for decentralized energy distribution allowing end-customers to trade their surplus power and to generate additional revenue from it. We need to be able to make more technical tests of our small scaled mini-grid.

Legal: In off-grid rural electrification, there are massive regulatory barriers. E.g.: additional RnD is required to meet the exact standard of the Zambian ERB or respectively Cameroonian regulation. We have partners who can support in that regards (DEG, DENA & EEP 2020) but we need to make sure to technically meet the local regulation in each country in which we will deploy our SHS.

Financial: We are currently quite low with our cash flow situation. We want to finance R&D first as to ensure to offer the best technology for a low price to reach even the last individual of the BOP. Also distributors need to be incentivised to test for a new technology.

Cultural: In the scope of the Mesh, substantial financial incentive will be important to convince distribution partners to contribute to this project.

Market barriers:

The Solar Home System sector is highly competitive (eg: Schneider, Zola, numerous low quality manufacturers in China, …). While we do differentiate from the competition with our PAYGO feature & long lifespan of our product (LiFePo4), the development of the MESH is key to foster a deeper impact in the off-grid energy market.

Technical: Thanks to the support of our local partners we receive a continuous echo from the field of how the new technology performs. We also are in co-development mode with our distribution partner in Cameroon who supports us in the hardware and software development, bringing in important feature requests and ideas since they operate close to the end-customer and can put the product better into perspective. Having access to financing will also allow us to continue investing in our internal RnD as to test & finalize the Mesh.

Cultural: Support by strategic & committed partners on the field. 

Legal: Support by strategic partnerships, competent committed partners on the ground that can solve issues/discussions with the ERB, politicians, village or regulators.

Financial: Strategic partnership with a larger European utility company who is very eager to support the development of the MESH.

Solarworx collaborated with private distribution partners across sub-Sahran Africa and South-Eat asia. We also receive support by various government entities such as Power Africa (USAID) or the German DEG. We currently seek another strategic partnership with a larger greentech corporate, which happens to be our potential future equity investor.

Our value proposition: next generation of PayGo enabled solar home systems allowing any individual to get a reliable source of clean energy. 

Cost structure: Most of the costs is on acquiring the systems, R&D and payroll payment. 

Revenue: Selling directly the solar home systems to our clients (ie: distributors). We expect approx. a 1Mi in revenue by the end of 2020.

Social Impact: enabling *anyone* with poor/ unreliable source of energy to get access to clean electricity by lowering the cost of energy access. We also allow anyone who want to scale their business activity using solar to do so by using the modularity aspect of our systems.

By the end of 2021, we can expect to be financially sustainable.

Reducing our product costs and client acquisition costs is our first target to reach that objective and maintain it in the future.

Also, as soon as the R&D and go to market strategy implementation for the MESH is achieved, we will be able to serve a larger amount of people living in off-grid areas at a lower cost.

The company was financed initially with 230k seed investment (equity) and an additional 200k€ in grants. We are currently raising close to 1MioUSD equity with a strategic investor.

We are raising nearly 1Mi with a strategic player in the solar industry and seeking for 200k on grants.

As one of your Global Heroes we would highly benefit from The Elevate Prize to overcome these challenges in particular:

A. Technical barriers:

1. We are finalizing the R&D of the MESH. The technology is developed internally and will have to be tested on field as soon as it is ready (expected by the end of the year). We will then test it commercially with a pilot to be launched by the beginning of 2021.

B. Market barriers: 

1. Working on a tailored media and marketing campaign will definitely help us to amplify our public awareness as well as our social impact throughout rural areas in developing countries. This will allow us to test the go-to-market approach & get direct feedback of our MESH feature.

2. Having access to SOLVE's dynamic network of the Elevate Prize Global Heroes and partners will allow us to penetrate even deeper into the African and South East Asian regions. We also always like to make collaborations and share back with the community what we learned in order to foster even a deeper social impact across the world.

C. Financial barrier: 300K$ grant spread in 2 years will help us accelerating our MESH feature development & its go to market strategy. All in all, it will help us improving the inclusivity of our product and optimize our distributors acquisition costs & operation efficiency. 

We want to share back our knowledge, social & environment impact assessments to the larger audience out there. Each time we deploy a new module, we can estimate the amount of CO2 saved compared to diesel generator or kerosene lamps. We can share these figures to the public as to raise awareness on households footprint.

These ressources could help people understand better how they can change their own carbon footprint and also be more aware of sustainable solutions to improve livelihoods in developing countries. 

This has the potential to build a massive movement to galvanize people all over the world to do good in their own community.

Partnering more closely with UNHCR on addressing the energy access issues in Refugee Camps. Working with the World Bank on microfinance topics to help distributor pre-finance the products and provide micro  credits to their end users.

We're also looking for partnerships with Microfinance institutions in general to help our partners reach their full social impact potential.