REVup: Catalysing Bankability of East African Mini-grids by Integrating Transport Energy Demand
The REVup Project is researching new business models to accelerate clean energy access in Kenya, co-funded by UK government and a private consortium: Sustainable Transport Africa and Knights Energy, established Kenyan Emobility and mini-grid specialists; VAI Capital, an innovative Swiss investment fund; and New Resource Partners, a UK-based specialist clean energy consultancy. We aim to create new mini-grid investment projects that are profitable enough to attract commercial investment, by improving the energy offtake from installed renewable energy capacity such as solar arrays. Commercial investment can impact positively many more villages than can be addressed by public funding alone.
Energy offtake can be improved by catering for demand for electric transport (two, three and four-wheeled) alongside domestic and commercial energy demand. This stacking of different end-user types can make better use of existing solar capacity (we call these "optimisation" projects). We are also exploring opportunities to deploy clean energy mini-grids with Emobility users as their primary customers, serving in addition local domestic and commercial loads (we call these "transport-centric" projects). And we aim to provide the means for developers and investors to identify portfolios of many such projects through the development of new applications of New Resource Partners' EnQuip software platform.
Key Learning Points:
- Energy offtake from rural Kenyan mini-grids is as low as 20% in some cases; most commercial attempts to deploy mini-grids are loss-making. They are under-utilised particularly during the day when demand for transport services is high.
- Transport services demand (particularly by motorbikes) is so great that it may come to be seen as the core load for a mini-grid project in the rural context.
- Like domestic loads, small transport users are likely to be seen as a payment risk, and so they do not yet represent a bankable anchor load for investors, however.
- Technology is still in question e.g. motor location and battery racking vary; battery swapping prevails over direct charging.
Hugo Chandler
Director and Co-founder
New Resource Partners Ltd.
Hugo has spent his whole professional career in clean energy (since 1999). His focus in recent years has been on optimising distributed portfolios of clean energy assets through new business models and energy storage, to better match generation and demand curves. At New Resource Partners, Hugo leads the development of new software to identify investment opportunities in local energy systems including Emobility infrastructure.
Hugo is a Director of New Resource Partners, which he co-founded in 2018. Before that, Hugo started the Grid Integration of Variable Renewables Programme at the International Energy Agency, where he was also the agency's lead on wind energy. Before that he was in Brussels at the European Wind Energy Association (now Wind Europe), where he set up the European Wind Energy Technology Platform. He has an MSc. From Imperial College in Environmental Technology.
Director and Co-founder
New Resource Partners Ltd.
Hugo has spent his whole professional career in clean energy (since 1999). His focus in recent years has been on optimising distributed portfolios of clean energy assets through new business models and energy storage, to better match generation and demand curves. At New Resource Partners, Hugo leads the development of new software to identify investment opportunities in local energy systems including Emobility infrastructure.
Hugo is a Director of New Resource Partners, which he co-founded in 2018. Before that, Hugo started the Grid Integration of Variable Renewables Programme at the International Energy Agency, where he was also the agency's lead on wind energy. Before that he was in Brussels at the European Wind Energy Association (now Wind Europe), where he set up the European Wind Energy Technology Platform. He has an MSc. From Imperial College in Environmental Technology.