Future Plans and Numbers

I discussed with them their current business plan and tried to understand where they want to take the grid.  The future of the micro grid lies in the hands on the group and how they vote on where to spend money. They are a very democratic and fair group which try to serve all interests. As I said in the previous post, already in the pipeline are the needs of a printer and photocopier. They also want to expand their shop and the number of computers they have. All of these ideas, and probably more, are in the mix with the grid and of course you can only spend money on so many items.

Miki, the chairman of the Lwemodde Youth Group, said that he wants to put 1 solar panel (I assume 100 W) in another fishing village like Malembo. I think the idea was to start with 1 and then slowly make their way to 2 solar panels so it would be a microgrid equal in size to the Malembo Microgrid. This is a fair plan especially since they also only have 1 PWM5 solar charge controllers left. This one was kindly donated by Julian Ilett a few months ago.

Now that Lydia and I have given them the knowledge to install a solar grid and expand it, I think our work in that regards is complete. There group will make the best decision about when to fund expansion because they definitely understand the surrounding market. We are grateful to have worked with such an organized and considerate group. They are becoming more powerful than the local government and may as well just be the local government in many ways.

Besides all the other modes on income and expenses that the group has, we did some rough paper calculations about the payoff period for a 200 W solar grid like the one in Malembo. Below are the rough costs and the amount of money you can make each month. Currently there are 10 clients but they are about to install boost/buck converters to expand coverage. If this occurs they estimate they will have 30 clients. I still believe they can get up to 50 easily but we will work with the conservative number.

Note: all values are in Ugandan shillings (UGX).

•        100 AH lead-acid battery – 400 k
•         2 * 100 W solar panels – 1600 k
•         30 * LED lamps – 300 k
•         30 * switches – 10 k
•         5 spools of wire – 75 k
•         Solar charge controller – 75 k
•         Boost/buck converters – 150 k
•        Other little pieces and safety money – 100 k

We can round this off to 2.7 M UGX per grid. Now with 30 customers paying 9 k per month, you can get 270 k per month. Each month you need to pay the person running the grid. The group told me they would expect only 100 k per month. The other 170 k would go to maintenance and the salary of the technician. We have not even considered phone charging revenue. A very rough estimate says that we would get 50 k per month from that going to the group’s coffers. So if we assume 150 k per month is going to a central surplus, you could pay off the 2.7 M UGX cost of a single microgrid in 18 months exactly. If they got 50 customers they could probably push this down to 1 year.

Now after 18 months they could set up another grid in another electrified village. The pay off period should now be half of 18 months. If they have 5 grids set up they could buy a new grid each month. This sounds like a very lucrative market to be going into. At worst case, I think the microgrid model that the group has implemented is very sustainable and beneficial to the communities it reaches. Hopefully in a few years’ time they have 2 or 3 more villages powered by similar grid schemes. Hopefully this has flow on effects to give more people a reading light at night time, more money for other expenses and a cleaner environment to be in.