Bitlumens

The Problem

The problems we are commited to solve are financial inclusion and energy access. Thats because we see an incredible market opportunity where over a billion people remain locked out of the banking system, due to the lack of legal identification, data and know your customer information. In addition, approximately a billion people don’t have access to electricity while 2.7 billion don’t have access to clean cooking solutions.

The Solution

Bitlumens uses the Internet of Things and blockchain technology to bring renewable energy to communities that are not connected to the power grid. We do this through a smart meter and a software (SaaS) provided to solar minigrids to monitor their systems. Households can use the smart meter for demand and load management while the minigrid and power distributing companies (DISCOMs) can get consumption data from individual households. 

India will experience an increase in PV minigrids in the next years. This is because in 2016, India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy launched a program to install 10,000 microgrids and mini grids, with a cumulative capacity of 500MW by 2021. In addition to this, other programs will further accelerate the demand of microgrids across the country.

Solar-powered microgrid initiatives target to deliver reliable electricity access to 25 million people in India and establish 10,000 microgrids by 2026, especially in the rural areas, which will drastically increase the demand for the Microgrid market over the coming years.

Without proper data it will be imposible for these companies to do energy planning and monitoring. It will also difficult to deploy these solutions without getting real time data access. We believe with the use of a smart meter we will be able to achieve data access for better monitoring of the power plant but also of the users. The meter can be locked and unlocked which means PV mini grids know which customers are paying and how much electricity are they consuming. Companies like peerlend (an indian MFI) have partnered with us to get the data and provide microloand to farmers.

Bitlumens uses the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technology to bring renewable energy to communities that are not connected to the power grid. The digitalization of off-grid communities is key to monitor the data from photovolatic (PV) installations, optimize their generation and allow the end user to get a credit score for financial inclusion.

To achieve the digitalization we developed a smart meter and a software provided to PV power plants, PV minigrids and end users (electricity consumers). The smart meter combines IoT with the blockchain. The combination of these two technologies allows for auditability, verification and transparency of data while providing better privacy.
The API will be able to connect to any device managing the data and
providing a permissioned ledger to multiple actors in the power sector.

Since the smart meter has an ID and is prepaid, the system can lock and unlock itself remotely. Example: a user opens the app, enters the ID of the smart meter, the amount it wants to add to the device and after the transaction went through the smart meter will be unlocked, This facilitates what we call remittance as a service, meaning foundations can send funds to a particular meter.

How are rural communities currently served:

1. Polluting and expensive fuels: Usually only a small portion of rural inhabitants have access to constant electrification or to financial services. Most of these communities depend on inefficient and hazardous fuels, such as biomass, kerosene, plastic, battery torches and candles. Fuels and its combustion process contribute to the release of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere. Among those fuels, kerosene is a source of CO2 and black carbon. Replacing all kerosene lamps worldwide with solar lights could serve as short-term action to reduce global warming while providing more efficient technologies in places where the already pay for fuels.

Kerosene and biomass powered wick lamps are far less efficient than solar powered LED lanterns. Kerosene wick lamps provide 1 to 6 lumens per square meter. LED has higher efficiency - measured in lumens per watts- quality and quantity of lighting when compared to kerosene lamps. The use of LED lanterns entails reductions on greenhouse emissions and operating costs.

 2. No access to a Certificate: Usually this communities dont have a bank account so if they need a microloan they might get it at high interest rates. In addition companies that provide energy services would collect electricity bills on a weekly basis. Sometimes this communities would lease a Solar Home System, aying for it in installements. At the end of the payment period they usually would not get a certifcate that states they had paid for their lease. They also dont get access to their data which might serve them get a loan.

What are we doing to understand their needs?

We are running  a pilot project in Maharashtra where agents would go to the ground and collect KYC information on farmers from the communities of Akot and Akola. We also collect data on the type of crops they have, harvest months and information on why would they need the loan.

How is the solution impacting these communities?

Access of investments flowing towards rural communities. According to our data collections we loans are needed for irrigation, tractor or mills.

Allowing renewable technologies to scale in rural areas where industrialized used cases are cosidereing. Energy access for irrigation or solar dryers.

Carbon accounting is provided to power plants to take into consideration their offsets.

Building an inclusive digital economy is key to achieve economic growth. Reliable electricity should exist for everyone, in particular for farming communities. Without farmers we would have huge food supply shortages. Providing this communities with better opportunities will lead to higher productivity. However, this will require access to digital services for everyone. It will also require reliability in the communication infrastructure, inteligent and affordable devices, particularly for those who do not have access in remote and rural areas. Further, access to credit lines and saving mechanisms are key for a global economy where nearly 2 billion people remain unbanked.

We have selected the prototype phase because we are prototyping the solution in Maharashtra India and we are looking to pilot it in other states as well.

1. The SaaS we have developed has a payment management system which allow users to prepay for their electricity through our prepaid smart meter.This will allow foundations and aid companies to unlock the smart meters remotely to pay for the electricity of rural communities.

2. We believe the access to a users data will facilitate access to options, i.e. access to electricity, access to financial services and access to a better living standard. Until now we have seen smart meters operate but a prepaid smart meter than can be unlocked remotely by a foundation, development bank or aid organization has the power of transparency as we know exactly where the funds are being redirected to. We believe this part is possible because we bring the communication protocol (GSM or Lora), the electronics and the SaaS facilitating the secure and transparent transmission of data and financial transaction flows.

Currently, there are over 2 billion people worldwide that do not have a bank account, severely limiting their ability to participate in the local economy. Access to basic financial services gives our users the freedom to establish their own line of credit, helping them advance their role in society.

The current number of people we are serving are 180 farmers in Maharashtra.

We will be serving 10000 people in one year and in 5 years we expect to serve 1.2 million people.

SDG 7: we believe better energy planning can be provided to renewble plants if they have the data they need to plan additional capacity. For example, viewing consumption data as proxy to forecast additional electricity demand based on an increasing capacity.

Educating the end consumer is also important for them to reduce electricity consumption whenever is needed. We do this by informing them through SMS about their weekly consumption and their future bills. We also contribute to a more efficient system as our SaaS does load management in case users connect too many devices out of their load limit.

SDG 8: We promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth by running workshops with communities and integrating the digitalization of payments and IoT.

SDG11: We want inflows of green and smart technologies into rural communities to help them get better services and options!

SDG 13: De-investing in fossil fuels is key to tackle climate action, this wont be only in cities but also among rural communities and we can only achieve that if we bring them better options.

Full Time:

Veronica Garcia

Daniel Heller

Yash Patel

Saiprasad Bhosle

Part Time

Sanket Raiturkar

Andrea Moroni Stampa

Andres Garcia

Jhunliam Ung

Veronica Garcia, CEO/Founder: Her past research focused on renewable technologies and on quantifying investment needs to reach the country targets for renewable power generation. She is the founder of BitLumens which facilitates the scaling of renewable technologies using Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technology.

Daniel Heller, Payment system expert: Daniel was the head of financial stability and payment system oversight at the Swiss National Bank, head of the Secretariat of the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems at the Bank for International Settlements, and executive director for Switzerland, Poland, Serbia, Azerbaijan, and four Central Asian republics at the International Monetary Fund. He received his PhD from the University of Bern and was a research fellow at Stanford University.

Developers

Yash Patel, Full Stack Developer: Expertise in levering front and backend technologies to develop high end web application using Angular, Bootstrap, HTML5 and React JS.

Saiprasad V. Bhosle, architect: He brings 8 years of experience as architect. With strong academic background in masters in business administration and IT he has supported various startup in strategizing their system architecture with the help of various research and analytics methods.

Sanket Raiturkar, he has extensive experience with blockchain technologies. Sanket has developed the blockchain APIs we already have in Bitlumens system. He brings 4 years of experience in Hyperledger fabric and Ethereum.

Andrea Morni Stampa: he is an electrical engineer who leads the engineering team.

Andres Garcia, he is the designer of the team

We are a diverse group of individuals with different nationalities and backgrounds who share the passion of bringing options to rural communities. We believe these options contribute to carbon mitigation, energy access and financial inclusion. For this to happen we embrace equity, diversity and inclusion in every aspect of the value chain.

Our goals are to contribute to the digitalization of the power sector by providing better transparency of data where the end users can benefit from it and where power plants can tokenize their carbon credits. We believe through partnerships and collaborations  we will be able to scale and provide energy labeling services which will contribute with the goals each country has on Net Zero.

We need help advancing our solution. We are applying in hope that Solver can connect us with partners who can help us go to market, in particular finding new clients and providing advisory on data management.

Monitoring and evaluation of the data collected will be key for energy planning and financial inclusion use cases.

We also need help with the expansion of our client base to be able to scale the way we expect it. For this we need additional pilot projects to be done in renewable mini grids.

We would like to partner with MIT Energy inititiave, in particular in Ulink and researchers such as Brian Spatocco and Ignacio Perez Arriaga.

We have seen MIT has collaborated with Tata and we would like to move the conversation forward in other teams within Tata Power to pilot our platform.

We can use the prize to pilot the technology in a Refugee camp. For this we are in contact with Mercy Corps in Ethiopia. The initial use case will be to install smart meters and connect these with our software (SaaS). This will be done to do remote monitoring of the renewable powr plants.

Before a power plant installs the smart meters Know your customer (KYC) data collection is done and stored in a private blockchain to provide security and verification of data accross the stakeholders, i.e. end customers, microloan providers (MFI) and power plants. This data can be viewed by the end user in his or her profile. The data feeds an algorithm that provide them with a credit score. The latter is the mix of KYC plus financial transaction information. The credit score is calculated in the blockchain and it can be viewed in our software to promote financial inclusion and autonomy in refugee camps. Users can share it with other MFI companies with the sole purpose of getting a microloan which in turn can increase their productivity and increase their income.

We will use the prize to pilot our solution in rural communities. Bitlumens uses the Internet of Things and blockchain technology to bring renewable energy to communities that are not connected to the power grid. We do this through a smart meter and a software (SaaS) provided to solar minigrids to monitor their systems. Households can use the smart meter for demand and load management while the minigrid and power distributing companies (DISCOMs) can get consumption data from individual households. 

Before a power plant installs the smart meters Know your customer (KYC) data collection is done and stored in a private blockchain to provide security and verification of data accross the stakeholders, i.e. end customers, microloan providers (MFI) and power plants. This data can be viewed by the end user in his or her profile. The data feeds an algorithm using machine learning that provide them with a credit score. The latter is the mix of KYC plus financial transaction information. The credit score is calculated in the blockchain and it can be viewed in our software to promote financial inclusion and autonomy in rural communities. Users can share it with other companies with the sole purpose of getting a microloan which in turn can increase their productivity and increase their income.

We also use machine learning to forecast electricity consumption in rural communities according to the size of buildings (GIS data) and survey data collected through our agents.