Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - REACH (Renewable Energy and Connectivity Hub)

Teaser

1.2 billion people live without access to affordable power and even more are in areas where supply is unreliable. Despite this, the UN expects the number of mobile phone users to reach 5 billion by 2019.The majority of these people are living in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa...

Summary

1.2 billion people live without access to affordable power and even more are in areas where supply is unreliable. Despite this, the UN expects the number of mobile phone users to reach 5 billion by 2019.
The majority of these people are living in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and refugee camps worldwide including Europe (90% of families in refugee camps have no access to electricity power). This is at a time where EU countries are under increasing pressure to provide accommodation, health and education support to a growing number of refugees that have been displaced from volatile areas of the world.
Living in these off-grid and grid-edge communities makes charging phones and accessing the internet a daily challenge, leaving many people without access to services like government portals, online banking, eCommerce and information on asylum.

Mobile charging due to unavailability of electricity: Nearly 700 million people worldwide have a mobile phone connection but no access to the electricity grid.
While this is an immediate challenge for people living in these areas of the world, access to electricity slows global economic development, preventing organisations from the EU and beyond from bringing business and services to users at the edge of the grid.

Internet connection: In addition to charging mobiles, 4 billion people are without any internet access. Internet market penetration is lowest in Asia (38%) and Africa (27%) among all continents. Considering the importance of the internet for communication and accessing information, demand is growing daily.

A convenient and affordable internet service provision is now a demand, especially from the deprived people. However, unavailability of electrical power supply cannot support smartphones as they need charging daily, restricting people\'s access to mobile internet.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission: Whilst solar is plentiful in developing regions, available solar panels are unaffordable and of poor quality. Consequently, solar provides less than 1% of global off-grid power (GSMA, 2013). Phone charging via diesel generators is 400 times more expensive in Africa than in the U.S. Diesel used for mobile charging in developing regions produces 16.2 million Ton of CO2emissions annually. The emissions from diesel generators cause lung disease that kills 2 million people per year.

Business need, technological challenges or market opportunity: The EU aims to reduce overall global greenhouse gas emissions. Solar power is a promising solution to this burning problem but many poor people cannot afford the up-front cost of these systems.

By working with organisations running large agent networks and using these networks to deploy our hubs, BuffaloGrid is able to avoid forcing end users to take out credit or contracts to access affordable mobile charging.

Our Innovation: Introduction of renewable energy sources will improve the life condition of these people and BuffaloGrid can play a very important role to it. Successful deployment of the hubs will allow off-grid and marginalised communities a reliable and affordable access to mobile communication and internet connectivity, facilitating local enterprises and drive economic growth.

We have done substantial progress regarding the technology readiness of our innovation. At the start of the H2020 project we were at TRL 7. During this Phase 2 project, we would like to reach TRL 9.
The operation and commercialization of our business consists of five components:
(1) Technology development for the Hub manufacturing
(2) Partership building for Hub deployment in field
(3) Network expansion through Hub service opportunity
(4) Continuous impact assessment and upgrade of Hub service capability
(5) Hub functionality validation.

Work performed

We have been working mostly on the Software and Hardware components of our service, while developing business relationships to achieve a successful commercialisation of our technology.
The Software part is formed by our Cloud Platform which is automatically updated and accessible anywhere, the BuffaloGrid Cloud gives complete control over a fleet of BuffaloGrid Hubs.
Through this platform, our customers are able to add agents, change pricing, access data, push content to the built in screens on every BuffaloGrid Hub across the network or create SMS surveys to any group of users.
It can capture user behaviour and data such as phone number, total spend, payment type, time, date and location of the transaction with the user.
It can also provide a full hub health diagnostics, the clouds allows easy monitoring of
status, location, battery level, temperature.
Finally it gives a full report of the agent performance by providing data on charges sold, income earned, contact and payment info.

On the hardware we have produced the first batch of new hubs but have face issues with our batteries and the certification of our hubs. We are now redesigning the hub to address those issues in order to have a fully certified hub that could be shipped anywhere in the world.

During this development period we have deployed prototype units with Airtel in India to gain further user insights. Since we launched our pilot with only 10 units, we have served 4,601 users with 10,113 charges, gathered 1,410 survey responses and displayed 8,941 adverts for WhatsApp.

The campaign with Whatsapp has been quite illustrative as it provides insights of the powerful campaigns we can support. It’s clear fake news is a real problem. Across every continent, rumours spread across social media and the internet like wildfire. In the worst case scenarios, misinformation can have serious real-world implications. The campaign is titled ‘Spread Joy, Not Rumours’.

Final results

The Whatsapp campaign described in the previous section is something that has been quite a success. With a small amount of hubs, ten to be precise, we have been able to provide just under 10,000 adds that have been seen by just under 5000 people. In this exercises our users are being informed of the dangers of fake news but this type of campaign can be used for anything, from public health messages to assistance to refugees.

The combination of our cloud platform with our hardware allows to very easily upload the video message that wants to be distributed and within seconds it can reach tens of thousands of people in the most remote regions.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.buffalogrid.com.