DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY

Cool Efficiency in West Africa

Project disclaimer

Disclaimer: The data for this page has been produced from IATI data published by DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY. Please contact them (Show Email Address) if you have any questions about their data.

Description

Cooling infrastructure - fridges and freezers - are vital for commerce, home use and for preserving medication, vaccinations and food. Unlike many off-grid solar energy systems, cooling solutions must operate as close to 24/7 as possible to ensure there is little/no wastage and are therefore subject to 'over-specification', leading to high energy system costs. In addition, when using a solar system to power a fridge, there are multiple issues that can interrupt the power supply including faults on the solar, battery or load sides, tampering, incorrectly sized systems or low energy yield due to poor weather. This project brings together a consortium of companies that seek to solve these issues so that project partners Focus Energy and Koolboks can offer a higher quality and easier to manage cooling services for customers in West Africa. To do this, the project builds on Inclusive Energy's remote monitoring system, Cloud Solar, and will seek to develop data modelling and machine learning techniques with both the live data and meta-data to deliver insights to cooling service providers and their customers. As well as reacting to faults and issues that have already occurred, the project will investigate and develop a solution to provide predictive maintenance for a range of issues including predicting the end of life of the batteries and predicting probable system issues such as lack of energy availability. These issues can then be mitigated with sophisticated load shedding and controls via the Cloud Solar charge controller, along with alerts for the solar system owners and providers to advise on energy saving techniques. Therefore, the project proposes development of 3 parallel and integrated capabilities: (1) analyse, (2) forecast, (3) mitigate. Inclusive Energy will work with Koolboks and, Focus Energy, and their West African customers, to ensure that the insights are relevant and that the user interface is fit for purpose.

Objectives

Cooling infrastructure - fridges and freezers - are vital for commerce, home use and for preserving medication, vaccinations and food. Unlike many off-grid solar energy systems, cooling solutions must operate as close to 24/7 as possible to ensure there is little/no wastage and are therefore subject to 'over-specification', leading to high energy system costs. In addition, when using a solar system to power a fridge, there are multiple issues that can interrupt the power supply including faults on the solar, battery or load sides, tampering, incorrectly sized systems or low energy yield due to poor weather. This project brings together a consortium of companies that seek to solve these issues so that project partners Focus Energy and Koolboks can offer a higher quality and easier to manage cooling services for customers in West Africa. To do this, the project builds on Inclusive Energy's remote monitoring system, Cloud Solar, and will seek to develop data modelling and machine learning techniques with both the live data and meta-data to deliver insights to cooling service providers and their customers. As well as reacting to faults and issues that have already occurred, the project will investigate and develop a solution to provide predictive maintenance for a range of issues including predicting the end of life of the batteries and predicting probable system issues such as lack of energy availability. These issues can then be mitigated with sophisticated load shedding and controls via the Cloud Solar charge controller, along with alerts for the solar system owners and providers to advise on energy saving techniques. Therefore, the project proposes development of 3 parallel and integrated capabilities: (1) analyse, (2) forecast, (3) mitigate. Inclusive Energy will work with Koolboks and, Focus Energy, and their West African customers, to ensure that the insights are relevant and that the user interface is fit for purpose.

---

Location

The country, countries or regions that benefit from this Programme.

Nigeria

Disclaimer: Country borders do not necessarily reflect the UK Government's official position.