Monday, February 18, 2013


India: Forget the grid, community power is here


As my colleagues at GSMA have demonstrated in a number of excellent reports the potential for Community Power to deliver where the centralized grid has failed is simply tremendous. But what is it? Check out a few of these videos from OMC and let me explain.Just days after the historic blackout reminded us that centralised coal is the problem, not the solution to India’s energy woes, a new era of entrepreneurs marked the beginning of a truly revolutionary effort to deliver energy access. The landmark deal that marked their arrival was of course lost amidst the coverage of the blackout and the continued death spiral the coal sector finds itself in. Nonetheless, the deal between OMC Power, and Bharti Infratel (India’s largest mobile phone provider) to provide clean renewable energy to its off grid cell phone towers was indeed historic. It marks the arrival of Community Power and it couldn’t have come a moment too soon.
As mobile phones leapfrog traditional infrastructure a population of 548 million un-electrified mobile phone users has driven the mobile phone industry to fall all over itself to help them keep their phones charged. That’s because when people’s phones are charged they use them more, and when they use them more the mobile phone companies make more money — significantly more money. This has created a dynamic that turns the traditional view of delivering energy access on its head. Instead of seeing it as an ‘expensive development project’ it is increasingly becoming a lucrative business proposition.It just so happens that taking advantage of this proposition solves another vexing problem for mobile phone providers – costly diesel. By switching out the expensive diesel gen sets that power their off-grid “base stations” – radio towers that convert electricity into radio waves — the companies save money.  In India alone there are an estimated 400,000 towers over 150,000 of which don’t have reliable access to the grid.This is where Community Power comes in. These base stations act as anchor clients for small scale energy projects by committing to the purchase of a majority of the power supply generated by a company like OMC. With this guaranteed revenue stream in hand, OMC can then sell their excess power generation to local communities via mini-grids, transportable batteries, or by directly charging applications (like phones) on site. This helps the mobile phone companies keep their customers phones charged, it reduces their monthly power bills, and it electrify’s rural communities — this is community power.
The OMC deal is historic because it’s the first community power scheme to have a client like Bharti that offers tremendous opportunities for scaling. But even more importantly, OMC may be proving that this model is even more viable than we previously thought.
That’s because the key to making this model ‘bankable’ (convincing financial institutions to actually pony up the money to make it happen) is the mobile phone towers anchor demand which provides financial institutions with the comfort of guaranteed revenue. At least that’s the conventional wisdom — that you need anchor tenants.
The most interesting and exciting piece of information from staff conversations with OMC is that over half of all revenue may come from the community power portion of the business — not from supplying the towers. Forget the tower companies, the people themselves are bankable. Something people like Harish Hande at SELCO have been telling bankers for decades.
But getting financial institutions to understand this, let alone act on it, has proven to be one of the most significant obstacles in delivering energy access. Take the World Bank: Despite repeatedly hearing from the world’s leading energy access providers that access to finance was their most critical barrier, the world’s foremost development institution failed to commit finance at Rio+20. What’s more, despite important programs like Lighting Africa, the Bank continues to fail to pony up financing for the very innovations that will solve the vexing issue of delivering energy access for the poor (hopefully that will change now that the Global Off Grid Lighting Association is up and running).

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Quotes from Einstein


I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
Albert Einstein

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
Albert Einstein

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
Albert Einstein

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
Albert Einstein

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
Albert Einstein

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.
Albert Einstein

I have just got a new theory of eternity.
Albert Einstein

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
Albert Einstein

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
Albert Einstein
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein

I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.
Albert Einstein

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Albert Einstein

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
Albert Einstein

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.
Albert Einstein

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
Albert Einstein

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Albert Einstein

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Albert Einstein

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Albert Einstein
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
Albert Einstein

In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
Albert Einstein

Information is not knowledge.
Albert Einstein

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
Albert Einstein

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
Albert Einstein

Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
Albert Einstein

It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
Albert Einstein


It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Albert Einstein

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
Albert Einstein

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
Albert Einstein

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Albert Einstein

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
Albert Einstein

It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
Albert Einstein

It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.
Albert Einstein

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
Albert Einstein


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