Some of Elizabeth Nyeko’s earliest memories are of growing up amid the throes of civil war. As a child in northern Uganda and, later, Sudan, she would often sleep outdoors with her family as their home was at risk of being bombed. She would gaze up at the night sky, trying to distinguish the stars from the satellites – and wondering where the latter drew their energy from.
Three decades on, Nyeko’s interest in energy systems has only intensified. Today, she is on a mission to bring affordable, reliable and low-carbon electricity to rural communities.
According to the World Bank, over 11 per cent of the world’s population do not have access to electricity. However, mini-grids – small-scale, self-sufficient electricity distribution networks – are slowly democratising the utilities landscape, helping to electrify low-income communities that are not served by the main grid.
In 2012, while pursuing a PhD in clinical medicine at the University of Oxford, Nyeko set up a biomass-powered mini-grid back in Uganda with her brother Peter and their company, Mandulis Energy. The duo developed a method of converting agricultural byproducts such as rice husks into synthetic gas, which was used to drive turbines to generate electricity in a mini-grid.
But mini-grids like the one the siblings set up require extensive planning and are often not as efficient as they should be. “Every time you set up a mini-grid, you have to start from scratch,” explains Nyeko. “Every mini-grid is bespoke, created specifically for a certain site and for a set number of households.” This means that although mini-grids are positioned as affordable energy solutions, they still require a considerable amount of time, expertise and money to design and assemble.
So, in 2017, Nyeko launched Modularity Grid – a London-based startup specialising in AI technologies that can streamline the operation of mini-grids. Nyeko and her team have piloted technology that harnesses machine learning to help mini-grid operators track and predict energy consumption more effectively.
The system connects the various components in a mini-grid and collects enormous amounts of data in real-time, including information about how much electricity has been generated and used. It then ensures that an uninterrupted electricity is available throughout the mini-grid by managing supply and demand accordingly, as well as prioritising critical users such as hospitals in the event of a shortage.
“In most conventional systems today, you have to hardwire the amount of energy that each user receives. But with Modularity Grid, you can easily change the amount of energy delivered to each user, or the number of households linked to the mini-grid,” says Nyeko. “This essentially creates a modular, plug-and-play system that can be scaled up or down as and when needed.”
The advantages of such a predictive and adaptive system are numerous. For instance, energy suppliers no longer have to oversize their mini-grids or overspend on batteries to store extra electricity, thereby decreasing uncertainty and saving money on hardware. “We have a century’s worth of experience forecasting demand in large electrical systems,” explains Adrià Junyent Ferré, a senior lecturer at Imperial College London who is leading a research project on mini-grids. “But forecasting is way more challenging when you look at smaller systems such as mini-grids, where a neighbour switching on a water heater may cause the equivalent change in the power balance as a TV pickup during a World Cup final. In general, the better you can anticipate people’s actions, the better you can manage energy generation and storage.”
Modularity Grid’s system also reduces the complexity of designing and planning a mini-grid, as well as the level of expertise required to set it up. “With our technology, energy suppliers can rely on technicians with basic knowledge of power systems to assemble a mini-grid within a day, instead of having to undergo months of pre-planning,” says Nyeko. This could make it easier to roll out mini-grids in rural areas, and bring electricity to everyone, for less.
Nyeko says mini-grids sometimes charge more than double the going rate for electricity. “The figure can rise to as high as US$1 or US$2 [per kWh] in some cases,” she says. “Really, it’s these prohibitive costs that we are trying to address.”
Modularity Grid is currently being piloted in Uganda, but Nyeko already has plans for expansion, with another pilot in Myanmar in the works for later in 2020. A £1.1 million grant from Innovate UK will help the company to engage with more mini-grid providers in markets like Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, she says.
Beyond that, she has her eyes on other industries too. “Ultimately, our technology can be applied to any context where there are standalone power systems, from aeroplanes to electric cars,” Nyeko says. She recently worked on a proof of concept for a satellite project with Airbus. “Amazingly, about a quarter of small satellites fail prematurely, but our solution can vastly improve the reliability and resilience of their power systems,” she says. For someone who once spent many nights marvelling at the cosmos, the Airbus satellites project almost feels like it was written in the stars. “It was really exciting for me to work on the proof of concept,” Nyeko laughs. “It was like coming full circle.”
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
