PowerPath's lateral electrification solution is an agile process that progressively extends the energy services delivered to end-users by quickly diffusing, and consecutively aggregating, basic smart units of solar power generation, storage and distribution called nanogrids. These expandable, collective solar systems are able to deliver DC-power up to up to six neighbouring households, or commercial or community users, who pre-pay by mobile for access to an energy service that provides power for mobile and fixed lighting, phone charging, multimedia, refrigeration and water pumping. The development of these nanogrids was achieved as part of an earlier, Energy Catalyst-funded project called IMPHORAA.
The investment cost per user for this power source is currently equivalent to that of other solar-home-systems (SHSs), however, the aim is to reduce it by 10-20%. This will offer usersof existing SHSs, such as households and shops, an energy solution that is more flexible, less risky and revolutionary in the benefits it can deliver. These include not having to pay for periods when power is not being consumed (contrary to SHSs that are on leasing models), mechanisms for increasing or decreasing the extent of energy usage at any given time, and not having to assume temporary ownership of the system, as the PowerPath solution is not provided as a leased option. Additionally, the Powerpath consortium company Nanoé will be in charge of the management of e-waste at the end of the product lifetime and not end-users.
Since 2017, more than 3,000 such solar nanogrids, connecting around 12,000 users, have been deployed by PowerPath partner Nanoé, in more than 600 villages of the Diana region in Northern Madagascar. A critical density of nanogrids has now been achieved, and local energy demand has grown sufficiently to make it economically relevant to launch the second step of the lateral electrification model, interconnecting the nanogrids to form a village-wide balancing microgrid, able to deliver a service that extends to providing energy for cooking, agro-processing machineries, and other motorised uses.