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Siten Mandalia is a 29 year old mechanical engineer who studied at Imperial and worked for Arup, before traveling around Africa. While there he noticed two things, the lack of power in many rural places and the high cost of it where it was supplied.
On his return to the UK in 2009, he setup Eternum Energy to develop the Solaris. The device is a combined photovoltaic solar panel and battery pack available in a range of capacities between 20 and 60 watts.
A Solaris unit, which costs around £64 to make, is sold to an entrepreneur in a rural village for a £5-10 deposit. The owner then charges for access to the Solaris to charge their mobile phones or similar devices. The owner pays off the remaining cost of the unit in weekly installments via mobile phone payments. The Solaris is activated in seven day periods by inputting a code after a mobile payment has been made. After around a year, the device has been paid for and is owned entirely by the entrepreneur.
He says the main components and enclosure were relatively straightforward to design and develop. The main design drivers were the inclusion of the pay as you go aspect and the data feedback. “The hardware side needed to be infinitely flexible in terms of payment methods and models,” says Mandalia. “A lot of the development was on the software side.”
“The units aren't connected to the mobile phone network. The areas we have targeted won't get data connectivity for at least another five years,” he adds.
The product is designed to be as robust and reliable as possible
After several years of development, a crowdfunding phase, a £35,000 EU grant, and becoming a member of an Autodesk scheme that allows cleantech companies free access to its 3D CAD software, Solaris launched in Tanzania last November with a 100 device pilot. The trial has so far provided good feedback, with a high level of demand for the devices. The company, which is now based in Valencia, Spain, is analysing the data to see how it can improve operation of the devices in the future. Mandalia is spending about 3 months a year in Africa to run the business. The company has a target of 20,000 entrepreneurs and Solaris devices in the field by 2020 and is releasing a version of the Solaris designed for use in the home.
Mandalia says: “People want higher capacity solar to power TVs, fridges, lights and radio systems. The aspirational aspect of these items and an improvement in living standards is fueling demand for devices like Solaris. Eventually they will grow into something that is more like a grid.”