So, I wanted to talk about energy access, which is a very unknown term in European nations
because we are quite lucky that we do not have the problem of energy access, but can anybody
guess how many people globally do not have access to electricity?
It is 675 million, which is like third largest country in the world if you put so many people.
So, and 2 billion people cook with polluting fuels globally and these 2 billions are
generally women, so many gendered and there was a study in nature which said that along
with women there is an infant who is always latching with the mother and because they are
cooking in polluting fuels, it leads to air quality pollution and there is a rise in
infant mortality and so we have a SDG target 17 SDG target which are said by the UN
and access to electricity is connected with 74 percent of them because you need electricity
for cooling, cooking, heating for anything else and we know that how access electricity and
without access electricity changes things.
So, what we wanted to tell is what is the importance of integrated energy planning?
You need to ensure that the demand which is coming up for electricity should be matching
with the supply for electricity and this is across all the nations and we also saw during
the Russia Ukraine war that how the demand was there, the supply was going down and we also
need to ensure that we are actually incorporating cost effective day centralized in enable
energy into the energy mix so that you know they grow and they grow in a sustainable and
commonly manner and why your energy planning needs to be inclusive, it needs to include
the needs for different sectors of the society, it needs to talk about what are the people
looking at the bottom 30 percent of the pyramid or what are the energy requirements
that are different geographical level.
So, what we did, we had three, so there were three reasons we thought of developing a platform
called energy access explorer, one thing was traditionally in the energy sector, it is
either supply side driven or demand side driven, it does not bring in both the demand
and supply at the same space and it is very important that we bring in demand, it supply
at the same space.
So, that the solutions which are given are viable to the consumers as well as in utility
is in the discounts and we wanted already use the reliance on geospatial expertise and
programming for the users.
Here our users are in line ministries like your education ministry, health ministry, utility
department, so they do not have to depend on high and expensive geospatials of present
programming expertise and we believe in a lot on data, open source solutions and the idea
was that because we are working in under a source or under developed country, we wanted
to have an open source initiative so that it can reduce the software engineering cost when
you want to go for the future development.
But what we say is that the code and everything is open source, but data can be open access
or with restriction depending on the sensitivity of the data.
So, we ended up developing energy access explorer and this is the only desktop public
code in SG-7.
So, we are hoping that more and more you know energy tools open source energy tool actually
take it up and become desktop public good and so what we data is like we bring the data
and tools together for an interactive analysis on the fly for dinging energy demand and
supply for a multi-dimensionality when a ge axis.
But it does is it is data informed, integrated, equity driven and inclusive, so we allow
users to have high resolution priority areas for intervention.
This is done by on the fly multi-cliter analysis which goes up to 100 meter of resolution.
We can even go to 10 meter if we have the data, but what happens is like your solar redance
data or wind speed data is generally not at that resolution, then it also acts as a dynamic
information system for data providers, so like state government and India is using the
backend to just store all the data and then it becomes one place for all the data for
them.
You can use it to track changes over the time like you know you can use how a particular
scheme has been bringing in the changes over time in space.
We have the data from census data, satellite data, global data and national data and
primary data.
Is it an example how we have added demand data which then comes from what is the demand
which is coming work for electricity or what is the supply options, what is the physical
infrastructure which is present or what are the different energy sources.
It can be small, it can be wind, it can be your biohomel or bio energy depending on the
area.
So, what we have done is for the front end, the data analytics, there is no need for programming
and geospatial expertise, the users have been trained to actually put their data, no
the analysis and then we have a backend for which we do not expect people to have programming,
there are very basic GIS expertise.
So, EA is backend is so, what we have is we have automated data processing because
we are putting a lot of data, we ended up building a tool for paper in this is in
using jdahl in Golang, what it does is it automatically picks the data with the line
ministries and different departments are putting up and then it converts the data, reproject
the data and mass the data depending on the need, then it has a dynamic database, we use
post-grace and post-grace, we have data storage, we use Amazon S3, we have a customized
content management system which is very important because as we are growing we are able
to use the modularity of the different, applicator, different modules and we also wanted
to have the coherence and convergence of different countries and we have a variety of base
map which we get from over this thing, above box and we have a modular API which connects
everything together and this is the backend, what we have done is according to the different
roles and responsibilities people of the partnering institutions and data provider, they can
add the data, they can add it, they can decide where to put the data.
So, we have also we have the website is on production staging, creating and development.
So, the idea is that production is visible to everybody else, staging is where we put
some of the data which is not available for open access, containing is where we are training
our local partners in the government officials and how we have developing is any where we go,
we map the stakeholders, then we understand that we are there other geospatial tools in an
edge access space available there, then we do data collection harmonization and we also
keep on enhancing the web infrastructure with new features and functions according to the
area, we do capacity building and the idea is ultimately that local government and local
working group actually take the administrative rights and we then support from the backend
and then we give them technical support. So, this is just small fact, currently we are covering
32 percent of the total unserved and underserved population globally, we started from three
countries and now we are at 20 key geographies, we are lucky that we got a partnership with
more than 200 stakeholders and which this is such a niche object that having 25,000 it earning users
is a very big achievement for us, I just walk through very quickly about some how we have been
working in different sectors by providing an hh as an exterior thing. So, we start with
productive users of energy for agriculture, so the productive uses like is very critical for the
growth especially in the agricultural activities and in Africa around 17 percent of the people
I mean 17 percent of the GDP is on agriculture, so can we actually map the product you know where
are the productive uses, if they need an energy, do they need cold storage, where are the
grid system, how do you actually ensure the grid goes there, then similarly in Kenya there is a
rule which the government has got a rule that every county needs like we have municipalities
are given in Europe, they have counties needs to make a county energy plan every two year.
So, this is a county energy plan which we help them make for a community. So, what we do is we
actually start with capacity building and they stand the data and we also use different models
like for this model we use least cost electrification which is also an open source model and we
used on store for cooking scenarios that what will be the demand of cooking, what will be the demand
of electrification and then all the data was integrated, so that you know where how and how to
like how much will it cost and then we actually ended up making a county energy plan with them.
So, this was very recently launched by the government as council of governors in Makwini County
and then we work on powering health care with the different health ministries. So, what we did was
you and you took what is the health care facility and then you actually using the population
density and time taken to travel, we actually calculated what is the energy required for each
and every facility using ramp model. So, ramp is also an open source model. So, when you got
electricity required for every day you can actually combine it and get the electricity for the whole
country, what it helps is now the minister if you wonder has better negotiation for operations
and maintenance when they are putting a PV solar system. Because if you are doing one health care
facility they do not have very bigger bargaining skill but if you are doing for say thousands
you can say that we need five years of operation and maintenance because one thing is to install
the second thing is that it should run for the long time. So, similarly this was done in
Charkana small shed in India where we helped them to prioritize which health care facilities should
be solarized first and using this they actually ended up solarizing 300 health care facilities
out of 3000. So, we also work for Makwini County with the UK back to how to decarmenize transport
sector because everybody is not talking about put EVs but if you are putting electric vehicles
you need to understand where to put electric vehicles and from where the supply of electricity
will come for the electric vehicles. Otherwise if you are just thinking of putting electric
vehicles after a point it will go away. People need to have like it is like if you have icy
engine as there is no fuel people will stop saying so we did this. But identify as these are
the places because there is a 100 1 billion project to electrify Kenya with electric vehicles and
the last example is this was done with World Bank they used an analysis from EAE 2 and
where are the 1 45 or it has where more than 19 billion people are living to prioritize for
of red electrification and I will stop here. So, what we have done is we are very focused on
equity. So, equitable access to electricity we need equitable access to
software so that the stakeholders we have been left from the conversation can actually get you
know granulated data and analytics and gain insights and we believe in cross sectorally here
working group. So, each and every geography where we go in we have local capacity building local
working group so that they actually take it forward and it is according to the need of the
geography not according to the need of us and I will stop here. So, sorry. So, we have the
code available in GitHub the website is also there and we are lucky enough to have a EAE training
module and I will stop here if there is any question.
I have lots of time please ask questions yes please.
I would imagine you ingest data from many different sources in many different formats how do
you handle this in the various geography. So, what we do is thankfully due to our local capacity
building local working groups we train them how to upload the data and we actually ended up
building a tool called paper which thus so here we have automated data processing tool
paper which using gdall in go lang we have built it. So, it takes the data it harmonizes the data
it ensures that it it fits into the parameters we need it. So, it does reprojection from one
projection system to another projection system we calculate euclidean distance because sometimes
you want to know from how many kilometers away from the road network is the health care facility.
So, it calculates the distance it then master data. So, everything is reprojecting in the way
it aligns with the software. Any other question yes please.
So, we started at seven years back we are not very big and we launched our first system in 2019
and now we are so we started with Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda. Now we are in 20th
geographies across of sub-sarn African South Asia. So, we have 200 plus partners right now we are
based. So, we have funding from SNV, we are funding from IKEA, 3M, good energy is doing foundation
but we are hoping to make it a little bit more sustainable and more responsible depg that it
slowly you know gets into revenue we do not want revenue from the government partners or others
but right now African development bank is using it. So, can they actually use it for you know
the so it can it be consultancy for African development bank. So, that is the idea.
Oh, we are a very small team so we are at the aim of seven people.
The third of the worlds on the electrify means yes. So, I think many of the projects present at
here today would be eligible for a digital public good. What is the benefit from you being
a digital public good. So, for us because we are a very big believer of digital public so open source
data, open access, open policy. So, digital public is like a stamp that yes you know and it's like
open source it's like rectangles and squares. Every square is a rectangle but all rectangles are
not square. So, all open source are this you know not digital public good but digital public goods are
open source. So, to be a digital public good we have the criteria as a it should for full fill any
of the SDG targets the 17 SDG targets for equitable development. Then it so you get a community of
different digital public goods we also had a stand yesterday of an Ajax explorer. So, a lot of people
came and then you get community support and then we also talked about more of collaboration
that how do you collaborate between digital public goods and it's also some of the donors they
want people to have open source and digital public goods.
Very impressive some people yes please.
I see that you came up the places in your office where there is no energy of accessibility but then
do you leverage of these like cell these two like so not energy producers or is these something
that then the government takes. So, we so we actually work with Amda which is African
Migrate Developer Association then use it to actually identify where to go. So, what they do
is like if people have purchasing power capacity they are away from the gate connection and the
solar redance is not in good. So, they can go and put minigrate and people can afford it.
While the government uses it for just finish it while the government uses it to find which
are the 30 percent people in the bottom of the pyramid who can't pay for things. So, they use it
as assistance which can be provided for the people. So, we work with different partners and you
know depending on the need. But if you have any question you can reach out to on we an Ajax
this exposure. Thank you so much.